


to be the one who keeps you safe

by veterization



Series: fluff verse [7]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Established Relationship, Kidnapping, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-15
Updated: 2016-09-15
Packaged: 2018-08-15 05:20:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8044021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/veterization/pseuds/veterization
Summary: Peter goes missing. Stiles doesn't handle it very well.





	to be the one who keeps you safe

**Author's Note:**

> This is for everybody who loves the "Person A goes missing; Person B goes to the ends of the earth to make sure they're okay" trope just as much as me (especially my sister, who as always, helped me lots with figuring out how I wanted this story to go).
> 
> As far as fluff goes, this is a little more angsty than not, but I really wanted to put a story like this where Peter's in trouble and Stiles freaks out into the fluff verse (and I do intend to do the reverse as well with Stiles in trouble and Peter wreaking havoc) and did do my best to both sprinkle in humor and put lots of fluff at the end.
> 
> I make several references here and there in the story to past pieces from this verse, but if you really, really, really don't want to read anything else and just want to indulge in some established relationship kidnapping drama with a happy ending, you could.
> 
> And on one last note, I cannot say thank you enough to everybody's support and sweetness for this verse. I'm still having a ball writing every part of it and am overwhelmed by your encouragement, especially the lovely people who are coming into my Tumblr ask box requesting more of it. If there's a fluffy story you want to see told in this verse, let me know!!

Stiles knows something is wrong when he doesn’t get an answer to his _SYTYCD and chill?_ text from Peter all evening long.

It gets worse as the hours pass. Peter is a prompt texter; he doesn’t let Stiles wait, especially when there’s the promise of sex, so this radio silence is… disconcerting. He ends up watching So You Think You Can Dance himself, keeping his phone on his knee just in case a message comes in, and spends the commercials checking the news to see if Peter’s in jail and/or splattered on the road because of a collision with a semi, which probably happened after mouthing off to said semi’s driver.

“Have you heard from Peter?” Stiles askes Scott over the phone when he’s officially drifted into the hours of bad late night TV and is sitting entirely in the dark.

“No. Why?”

“I haven’t heard from him all day. Something’s weird.”

“I can text Derek if you’re worried. See if he knows anything?”

“It’s fine. Just strange.” Very strange. Stiles stretches out on the couch, realizing suddenly that he's feeling a little uneasy about going to bed alone. He hasn't slept alone in _months_. He's always in Peter's bed or Peter's over in Stiles' bed and he's gotten used to it, the shared space, the sound of Peter's even breathing as he sleeps, the arm thrown under Stiles' shoulder to keep him close. "He usually doesn't—I don't know. _Ignore_ me like this."

"Did you guys have a fight?"

"Nah. We've been really good." Stiles grabs the throw on the edge of the couch, dragging it over his legs as he resigns himself to spending the night here instead of in his bed. "I'm sure I'll hear from him tomorrow. Maybe his phone just died." Unlikely, because Peter's the kind of person who gets paranoid when his phone slips under seventy percent. But maybe. "I'll let you know, okay?"

"Okay. Keep me posted."

After he hangs up, Stiles distracts himself by flipping through channels, mindlessly clicking until he finds something with a white enough sound to run overnight. He needs some kind of noise around or he'll never get to sleep—usually it's Peter's breathing, or his snoring, or the soft way he murmurs to Stiles as he drifts off, but it's just him right now, and everything would be much too silent if he turned off the television.

He kicks off his pants and lowers the TV's volume and lets himself try to get some sleep after that, doing his best to shake that uneasy feeling off his shoulders. He can't tell if he's just being paranoid or if his instincts are right and there's something wrong, _really_ wrong, but maybe by morning all of this will be cleared up and he'll have worried himself into high blood pressure for no reason. Maybe everything is fine.

He checks his phone once—twice—more before setting it on the coffee table and closing his eyes.

\--

He wakes up the next morning to continued silence on his phone from Peter's end, no texts back, no missed calls, not even an email sitting in his inbox. It's at the point then where Stiles starts wondering if he pissed Peter off with some offhand comment about his shirts being too tight and now he's ignoring him somewhere on purpose, probably at a spa resort in the middle of a steam room, but even that seems far-fetched. The last time they were together, all was smooth, and Stiles didn't make any derogatory comments about his choice of clothing, not even as good-natured jokes.

Maybe he got into some freak accident and has a broken emergency brake sticking out of his heart somewhere. Maybe he smashed his skull open on the road because a bus careened into him at eighty miles an hour. Maybe he's comatose in a hospital bed. Again. For somebody who can heal themselves, there sure still seem to be a shit-ton of ways Peter could be dead right now.

So he goes to the hospital when Peter doesn't pick up the next three times Stiles tries calling him, fingers tapping out a nervous rhythm on the steering wheel as he drives. He tries to tell himself as he drives that it’s unlikely that Peter will be there, and he really get himself worked up over nothing, it’s just—this is _strange_ , and Stiles can’t shake off that prickling, scratchy feeling crawling up his spine that something bad is happening and he just hasn’t figured out what yet.

He calls Peter one more time before he walks into the hospital, and when that too goes to voicemail— _hi, you’ve reached Peter Hale, I’d rather you didn’t leave a message, and go ahead and don’t call again_ —he stuffs his phone into his pocket, cursing, and heads into up to the hospital’s front desk.

“Hi,” Stiles says to the nurse behind the counter. “Is there a patient named Peter Hale in your system, by any chance? Recently admitted?”

He drums Ike fingers on the counter while the woman checks her computer. She seems to type endlessly on the keyboard, most probably finishing up a Facebook status before bothering to ease the pit of dread in Stiles' stomach. He curls his hands together when tapping on the counter stops being fun.

"Nope," she says. "Are you sure he's at this hospital?"

"No, I'm. Well. I'm not even sure he's in a hospital, to be honest."

"You don't?"

"It's, well. I'm just worried about someone. Did any John Does come in last night maybe?"

She goes back to typing, then runs her finger down her mouse and scrolls for what feels like another millennia, Stiles' nerves fraying at the edges like electricity wires the longer she takes.

"One Caucasian male, estimated to be in his late seventies," she says. "That who you're looking for?"

Stiles shakes his head. He rubs a hand over his face, starting to feel the defeat of hitting dead end after dead end, and the worry must be palpable, because the woman drops some of her professional rigidity and leans in closer.

"Are you all right?" she asks gently. "Who are you trying to find?"

"It's—he's—it doesn't matter, it's okay." Stiles doesn't want to get into it, not when he has no idea what happened himself. Maybe everything's fine and Peter's just taken a spontaneous meditative yoga trip. He talks about doing it all the time, usually prefaced with an eye roll and proceeded with a scathing comment about somebody's annoying habits. "Thanks anyway."

He pushes himself away from the counter before she can ask more questions. Things are only getting weirder and eerier and more unsettling as time passes, and either Peter's up and left because he's finally sick of Stiles and his hogging of the radio on long car rides, or something more sinister is going on. He's not even sure which outcome sounds better right now.

"Stiles?"

He turns around at the sound of a familiar voice saying his name, and there's Melissa, standing down the hallway in purple scrubs holding a clipboard. Stiles feels the strong urge to hug her until he feels better that he keeps at bay.

"Hey," he says, stepping closer. "I didn't realize you were working this morning."

"I'm helping a friend who couldn't make her shift," she says. She takes one look at him and seems to realize that something's wrong, not even needing werewolf senses to do so, and puts down the clipboard, coming up to him. "What are you doing here? Are you okay?"

"Me, yeah. I'm just—I don't know." Checking. Searching. Looking. _Worrying_. "Thought someone might be here."

Her lips twitch into a fraction of a smile. "One of your human friends or one of your special friends?"

"Special," Stiles says. He runs a hand through his hair. "And, uh. Bit more than a friend."

Her mouth opens and she nods, apparently needing no further explanation to understand. She reaches for his shoulder and gently leads him around the corner for an extra bit of privacy.

"Tell me what happened," she says in a low voice. "Who else is hurt?"

"Nobody—it wasn't like that. It wasn't some operation or stakeout or whatever." He rubs a hand over his head. He can't believe he's practically wishing that had happened, but the truth is, bad injuries can be waited out, and messy plans are eventually over. This, this confusion and silence and lack of anything to work off of, it's much worse. "I'm not even sure he's in trouble. He's just gone and this isn't like him."

"Okay," Melissa says. "How long has it been?"

"Three days," Stiles says. Is that normal for couples? He has no clue what normal is. All he knows is what they have, and three days is too long for them without a single word shared. "Do you think I should be worried?"

"It might just be a big misunderstanding," Melissa soothes. "Have you checked out his place?"

"Not yet," Stiles answers. "I have a key. I could go check it out."

She touches his shoulder, and even though she's trying to relax Stiles into not quite yet falling into a worst-case-scenario pit, her eyes seem a little concerned. "Don't go alone, all right?" she says. "Take Scott with you."

“Yeah. Yeah, that’s—that’s a good idea.” He nods. He can’t let himself freak out yet. Not yet. He’ll check out his place and have a good look around and then afterwards, if need be, he’ll freak out then.

\--

So he calls Scott, and Isaac too just to be safe, both of them meeting him outside Peter's apartment building fifteen minutes later.

"He's still gone," Stiles says as an explanation when they show up, clearly a little confused. Stiles refrains from saying anything else and being more dramatic than he ought to, like sharing out loud any of the millions of dark scenarios that have occurred to him since he left the hospital about where Peter might be. "I thought we could check out his place and I didn't—I thought it'd just be better if I didn't go alone."

Isaac's eyebrows flicker downward. "What exactly do you think happened in there?"

"I don't know," Stiles says, desperate not to start airing his worst fears quite yet. "Can we just—can you guys come with me?"

"Sure," Scott says.

They head inside and up the stairs without saying a word, although Stiles is sure that his pounding heart and erratic pulse is saying plenty on its own. All he wants right now is to unlock Peter's apartment and step inside and have everything be all right, have everything be explained. Maybe there's a note on the fridge that says that Peter is off on an impulsive wine country tour and is swearing off technology for a few days, be back soon, or maybe Peter's holed up in his bedroom pissed about something trivial like Stiles forgetting to record the VMAs, or maybe there’s some other harmless, reasonable explanation waiting for him on the other side of the door.

He fiddles with Peter’s key on his key ring, remembering the day Peter gave it to him. Or rather, added it to Stiles’ keys without asking and then helped him yank it free from Stiles’ car door when Stiles mistook it for his Jeep key and tried to unlock his car with it. It had devolved into a screaming match about why Peter couldn’t just use his _words_ and why Stiles couldn’t _focus_ that ended with them both storming off before later that night, Stiles used the key to get into Peter’s apartment and didn’t make a big deal out of it.

“Okay,” Stiles says, turning to Scott and Isaac and tapping his nose. “Get your supersniffers ready.”

The second he opens the door and steps inside, he realizes that werewolf senses aren’t even necessary to draw conclusions. The place is trashed, the clear signs of a struggle everywhere—the lamp by the couch is broken on the ground, there are claw marks puncturing the wall, and the couch has shifted into the center of the room. All of it is practically telling a story, of who jumped where when, of who went down first.

“Holy shit,” Stiles says. The more he looks around, the more ominous signs he sees all around him. Something clearly terrible happened here, something violent and aggressive that ended with Peter falling off the face of the earth and missing So You Think You Can Dance. “Holy _shit_ , this looks bad.”

He picks up the mail on the end of the table; there’s blood smeared over the stamp in the corner.

“Okay, yeah. This doesn’t look great,” Scott agrees.

Stiles fights down the urge to close his eyes and scream. There are just too many conclusions his brain is leading him to that are disturbingly dark. Peter mangled in a shallow grave somewhere. Peter tied up being tortured in an abandoned warehouse. Peter bleeding out thanks to the work of a revengeful criminal. He shuts his eyes and immediately sees images to pair up with his thoughts.

“There’s wolfsbane powder on the floor,” Isaac says.

Stiles opens his eyes and turns around to see Isaac kneeling on the ground inspecting a gathering of purple dust on the floor. “Looks like someone threw it at him and knocked him out.”

“Okay, stop.” Stiles can’t handle any more of this. No more speculating about the worst, time for action. “Come on. We need a plan.”

Scott steps up to him, grabbing his shoulder. He’s trying to calm Stiles down, but it’s impossible—he has the cool metal of Peter’s key in his hand and all he can think about is how maybe he could’ve helped, how he should’ve been here.

“I found his phone too,” Isaac mentions, joining them with it in his hand. He flicks it on. “Seven voicemails, Stiles? Really?”

“This isn’t fucking funny!” Stiles yells. “Peter could be dying somewhere and probably is and I don’t care if you couldn’t care less, I do and we need a _plan_. I fucking told him this would happen, I told him there were people out there plotting his murder, this is exactly why I said I wouldn’t marry him, I’m not going to be some goddamn war widow!”

“What? He asked you to marry him?”

“This is serious! I’m freaking out and I keep imagining Peter dead and cut in three pieces somewhere and we need to _do something_.”

Stiles’ outbursts seem to put a plug on Isaac’s smart comments, who’s gone from sharing one-liners to uncomfortable silence. Next to him, Scott’s brow is drawn and his eyes are locked on Stiles, the worry clear there. It makes Stiles wants to scream; Scott isn’t supposed to be worried, Scott is supposed to be certain and sturdy and full of plans.

“Stiles, it’s okay,” Scott says, clearly sensing his panic.

“What do we do now?” Stiles asks, not listening. He’s shaking but he knows that he won’t be able to stop until he feels like they’re doing something proactive and moving forward, not just sitting around in the wake of Peter’s kidnapping collecting evidence like rookie cops.

“We’ll find him. We’ll look for him.”

“Where?” Stiles asks. Beacon Hills is big, and hell, there’s no telling if he’s even still in Beacon Hills and not in the back of a truck being driven into Canada or bound in a jet about to be dropped into the ocean. Jesus Christ, the nightmares aren’t ending.

“We’ll use his scent. We’ll trace his steps.”

God, it just seems impossible. Even the idea of involving his dad and the police is troubling him—what if the people who took Peter are dangerous, what if a human sheriff wouldn’t stand a chance against them, what if they’re ruthless enough to kill anyone who tries and stand in their way? What if Peter’s already dead and Stiles to rebuild and move on and oh god, he’s about to disintegrate into a panic attack.

“Hey,” Scott says, coming closer and touching Stiles’ elbow. “It’s okay. We’ll find him, we will.”

“I told him this would happen,” Stiles says, holding his knees. “I told him. Fucker.”

“We’ll find him,” Isaac says, joining in, which unsettles Stiles more than it calms him; Isaac being serious and supportive is a rare sight to behold. "Calm down." He turns to Scott. "Where should we look?"

"Everywhere," Stiles pleads.

"Okay, how about we trace his scent as far as we can and then split up?" Scott's already pulling his phone out. "I'll ask Derek to help."

"I can help too," Stiles says.

"Are you sure?"

Emotionally, yes, logically, no, but what the fuck does logic mean at a time like this. If his father were here, he'd be telling Stiles that he's too frazzled, too vulnerable, too attached to the situation, and shouldn't exacerbate the problem by throwing himself into it and accidentally making it all worse, but Stiles can't just sit back and twiddle his thumbs. He wants to help, he _needs_ to help, and he isn't going to sit here in a stew of his own thoughts and dread while everybody else runs around town.

"I want to," Stiles begs. "I can check the hospital again or that coffee shop he likes or—or I could just go up and down the streets checking ditches."

"Stiles."

"I want to help," he says again. There's something wet prickling at his eyes and Stiles blinks it away. "Scott, you know I can't just sit back."

Honestly, when has he ever been good at that? All those years in high school, when was Stiles ever comfortable staying back while everybody else ran after monsters and battled for their lives and sprang into action? He's not meant for the bench, not when something is important and matters, and fuck, Peter is important and he fucking _matters_.

“Okay,” Scott says. “We'll all go together, okay?”

“Okay,” Stiles agrees. 

He tries to tell himself that it’s still too soon to panic, that what he needs now is a steady head and a strong resolve, but he can’t quite convince himself to calm down.

\--

The three of them drive around in Stiles' car, fairly aimlessly, until dark. It starts out making Stiles feel better, like they're taking initiative, not just sitting around in the wake of Peter's demise trying to cobble together a half-assed plan, up until it starts being clear that they're not getting anywhere. Wherever Peter is, he's not in plain sight, and driving around town in the increasing darkness isn't helping anything. At one point, Isaac and Scott seem to be doing it more so to calm Stiles down than anything else, which is something Stiles would appreciate more under less stressful circumstances. It also isn’t helping that they keep looking at each other when they think Stiles isn’t noticing, always the same expression, always a poorly concealed worry.

They agree to head back to Peter’s apartment to try and regroup, and by the time they make it, Derek’s there too, wiping his thumb through the patches of wolfsbane dust on the countertops, apparently recruited by Scott to come help with the search.

“Any luck?” he asks when they come through the door.

“Not really,” Scott tells him. “We followed his scent down south a little bit, but the wind was pretty strong. Not sure we got any closer.”

Derek nods, eyebrows knitted close together. He turns to Stiles, jaw hard. “What do you know?”

“Me?” Stiles says. “Uh, a whole lot of nothing? I was going to ask you.”

“What I know about him disappearing?” Derek says slowly. “I’m not hiding him in my loft’s closet, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Could you—this is not a moment for your dry fucking humor, okay?” Stiles says, so on edge it feels like his entire body has been whittled down into a knife’s edge. “Who do you know that might’ve taken him? That has a grudge against him? That wants him dead?”

Derek looks at the ceiling. “How many hours do you have?” he says. “Stiles, it would honestly be easier to ask me who _doesn’t_ want him dead.”

“Jesus Christ,” Stiles says, scrubbing his hands over his face. Derek is absolutely no help, Isaac is no help, even Scott is no help, and Stiles is ready to scream. “This is—I’m right on the edge of a panic attack, you all should know.”

He’s not even kidding. They have no leads, no real plan, no real shot of figuring this out in time at this rate. Scott touches his elbow, clearly trying to calm him down.

“We’ll look again tonight,” he promises.

“I’ll come with you,” Stiles says, already grabbing his jacket.

“No,” Derek says immediately. “You’re not.”

“What? I am.”

“You’re not,” Derek says again, more firmly this time. “It’s too dangerous and you’ll slow us down. And have you even considered that if these people wanted to push a button with Peter, they’d grab you too, and they might not see any reason to keep you in one piece?”

Stiles turns to Scott, waiting for back-up. The look on his face makes it clear he won’t provide it.

“He’s right,” Scott says. “You matter to him and if the people that took him aren’t done, you’d be a target.”

“It’s not like I’m helpless.”

“Basically,” Derek shuts down. “If you really want us to find him, stay back.”

Stiles doesn't want to wordlessly agree and back down. He's angry and scared and that combination lends itself to picking fights and lashing out, so he steps defiantly closer to Derek.

"I want to come," he says again. "Come on. I'm not a _target_. It's not like anybody knows I'm dating him."

"Right," Derek says, feeding off of Stiles' anger and setting his jaw, lips thinning. "Because you're so subtle about it." His eyes flick down to Stiles' shirt. "You reek of him, and he probably does of you too. If he's been kidnapped by anything even remotely supernatural, they'll be able to smell it."

"Stiles," Scott says, cutting in. "Just stay back where it's safe. It's not that we don't want your help—"

"We don't," Derek says.

"—it's just better if you're not putting yourself in danger."

"I want to come," Stiles says again, feeling restless and close to erupting and like a toddler being denied sweets, which is both belittling and frustrating to an unbelievable degree. His anxiety can't handle it if he's here alone, boiling in his thoughts, in his fears. "Anywhere but here. Anything but—but doing nothing."

He can tell that he's losing this argument. They're all looking at him like he's two seconds away from a breakdown, so even if he were physically strong enough to take care of himself while kidnappers run loose, they clearly wouldn't trust him to be so now when he's so heavily under the influence of his own emotions. He wishes he could prove them wrong, but it’s true, he’s close to shaking under the load of his worry, anger, exasperation, misery, oppressing fear.

“I can’t just stay behind,” Stiles says, desperate to not be stuck here alone. “Peter would expect me to look. I’d expect him to look if I was missing.”

“It’s not the same situation.”

“It is!” Stiles insists, his voice rising. “I’m coming, I want to come.”

Isaac, Scott, and Derek look at each other, and nothing in their expressions conveys any sort of sign that they’ve been convinced by Stiles. He knows how this ends, but that doesn’t make it any easier when they don’t end up letting him come.

\--

It’s hard for him to not watch the door after they leave. He wants to see it—Derek and Scott coming through the door with Peter held up, battered but alive, between them—but it doesn’t happen. He waits twenty minutes, forces himself to wait three more, then gets out his phone and texts Scott: _any luck yet?_

When he doesn’t get an answer, he sends the same text to Derek five minutes later. Isaac after that. He gets such radio silence back that he starts wondering if there’s a problem with his phone, if it isn’t getting any signal. He turns it off and on. He waits for the messages to stream in. They don’t.

Oh god, Peter’s dead somewhere. They’re not responding because they’re in a huddle trying to figure out how to break the news to Stiles. Sending it in a text would be terrible. Maybe he should check his email. Maybe they thought an email wouldn’t be as tacky. Subject line: You’re Single Again! Content: Don’t worry. Derek’s paying for the funeral.

He’s going to drive himself to insanity.

He starts cleaning up around himself as a distraction. Everywhere he looks, the remnants of Peter’s abduction stare at him. The marks on the wall. The powder on the floor. He can’t stand it. He keeps twisting deeper and deeper into a darker place until the idea of Derek and Scott carrying Peter inside seems stupidly optimistic. What even are the chances that Peter’s alive? Slim and getting slimmer the longer they take.

He tries putting on music to keep his mind occupied, but it turns out to be a bad idea. Every song in his phone's music library seems to remind him of Peter in one way or another— _why do you still listen to this? Haven't we had enough of Liam Payne in our lives?_ when One Direction's End of the Day starts playing, _I can’t believe this is in your music library, Stiles, do you know what century it is?_ when Sugar Ray’s Fly comes on, _the only good thing about his song is that we’ve happened to have fucked to it a few times_ when Drake’s Hotline Bling shuffles its way through. He keeps hitting next, next, next, waiting for something that doesn’t make him acutely aware of his own emotions, of his anxiety, and ends up ditching music entirely and focusing on cleaning up. He can’t sit in this wreckage anymore. It can’t _look like this_ when and if Peter comes through that door.

He scrubs everything. He sweeps the floor and gets rid of every speck of purple he can see. He pushes all the furniture back into place. He wipes away all the smears of blood, doing his best to pretend that it’s all just paint, or corn syrup, or something else that isn’t the ominous bodily remains of his boyfriend. He cleans everything so hard his hands ache a little when he’s done.

At ten p.m., exhausted and somehow still so entirely awake, Stiles picks up his phone and calls his father, desperate to hear a familiar voice that’ll relax him.

He tries to keep the conversation light—what did you eat for dinner, how was work today, is that possum in the backyard still giving you trouble—but the sad lilt in his voice must be pretty noticeable, because it doesn’t very long for his father to grow solemn and ask him what’s wrong. Stiles really doesn’t want to tell this story again, not when just thinking about it and how it might all end up is making him nauseous, but he can’t bring himself to pretend to be all right, not to his dad.

He tells him everything, the first few words that come out opening a floodgate to the rest, starting with the one-sided text conversations and the nagging notion that something was wrong and ending with the mess in Peter’s apartment and the resulting turmoil in Stiles’ head.

"Why didn't you call me?" he asks when Stiles is all done.

"Because, dad, I don't want you getting involved. These people—I don't know who they are, but they could be dangerous and I can't—" He takes in a rattling breath. "If they've got Peter and they've already. I mean. I can't lose you too."

"How long has he been missing?"

Stiles rubs the bridge of his nose. "A few days."

“I could send a few guys out there to search for him.”

“Dad, I don’t—”

“Stiles, come on. It’s my job.”

Stiles sighs. He can’t stop seeing disasters, like policemen looking for a missing person and ending up being slaughtered in the process and Stiles basically being responsible for all of it, but lately worst case scenarios are all he’s been able to picture.

“Okay,” he gives in. “But equip them. Like, a lot.”

The sheriff chuckles. “Will do,” he says. “Are you doing all right? Remembering to take care of yourself through all this?”

It makes Stiles realize that the worry has been all-consuming for him lately, eating at him like a sickness, gnawing at his normalcy. It’s like he’s completely forgotten to eat and sleep, his usual routine flipped on its ear in all the mess.

“Stiles. You can’t forget yourself.”

“I know,” Stiles says. “I’ve just—been distracted.”

“I get it. Trust me, Stiles, I do,” the sheriff says. “There was a time—before you were born—when your mother and I had a fight and she ran out. I didn’t hear from her for a while and I was so—I just couldn’t think of anything but her in trouble.”

“You never told me about that before.”

“Honestly, I was hoping it was something you could never relate to.”

Stiles plays with the edge of his hoodie, wishing it was doing a better job of warming him up. “How did you get through it?”

“Knowing it would be fine,” his dad says. His voice is heavy, weighted down. “Stiles, it’s going to be fine.”

Stiles doesn’t know how he can say so after everything. It wasn’t fine with his mother in the end, even if she did come back home, and so much has gone wrong since then, with Stiles, with Peter, with everybody. Peter could so easily not be fine; there’s only so many times someone can have close calls and have luck on their side.

He rubs a hand over his eyes. They’re burning, and his head’s aching, and everything feels sore and raw.

“So many people hate him, dad,” Stiles says. “It almost feels like it would just be karma if something happened to him.”

"Maybe so, but you wouldn't deserve it."

Stiles isn't so sure about that either. He hasn't exactly been a saint so far in life, what with all the masturbating and swearing and all the shenanigans that went on during high school, some more unethical than others, and maybe he would deserve to be cut down now that he's settled down and pushed his past behind him even though he's done nothing to atone for it.

"Stiles," his dad says gently. "You wouldn't deserve it." Stiles doesn't know how he does it, how he always knows what to say, but he's glad for it now. "You should get some rest."

"I can't. I'm waiting up for the guys to get back," Stiles says.

"They'll wake you up when they come back," he says, which is a good enough point that Stiles can't refute it. "You need sleep. Stuff like this takes a toll on your body."

"Yeah, I know," Stiles says, rubbing his eyelids. And he is tired. He's spent most of the evening wearing himself out both physically and mentally, cleaning up everything that reminded him of Peter being dragged out of here while his mind raced with worry, not to mention that nonstop fretting takes a pretty big chunk out of energy levels. "Okay. You win. I'll sleep."

"Good. Keep me posted, Stiles."

"I will."

He hangs up and looks at the couch—perfectly comfortable, the cushions his own choice after Peter dragged him among to the furniture mall—and wonders if sleeping there will be better than sleeping steeped in the smell of Peter's sheets and pillows and bedspread, if it'll hurt too much to be there alone. He's never slept in Peter's bed alone. Woken up there alone a few times, but always to the noise of Peter's shower running or to the smell of breakfast sizzling away in the kitchen. 

It’s idiotic, Stiles tells himself. He’s being an idiot. He just needs to stop thinking so much, _stop thinking period_ , and go to sleep, so he goes to Peter’s bed and curls up on top of it, dragging the pillow that he always uses here to his chest, pretends everything is normal, and tries to convince his body to give him a rest.

\--

He doesn’t remember falling asleep, but someone poking him awake jolts him upright into a foggy, frazzled state. He remembers that he’s in Peter’s bed, the smell of his shampoo on the pillow jerking him back to reality. It’s still dark out, the windows black except for the smattering of raindrops on the glass that are illuminated with the light of a streetlamp, and when Stiles checks the clock by the bed, he sees he slept a grand total of three hours. Rain is pattering down outside through the darkness, and in front of him, Scott sits on the side of the bed.

“Did you find him?” Stiles asks, terrified of the answer.

“Not yet,” Scott says. “The rain got in the way.”

Stiles feels his stomach sink. They’re taking too long here, and it feels like there’s a timebomb on the situation that’s ticking, ticking, ticking.

“Did you make any progress?”

“Sort of. We were following some leads, but the rain—it washed a lot of scents away.”

“I don’t want to lay low and stay behind anymore,” Stiles says, rubbing his eyes. “It fucking sucked. I just kept thinking and thinking and I couldn’t _stop_ thinking.”

“We just don’t want you making all this worse," Scott says. He sounds like he's pitying Stiles and has no idea what to say, what to do, eyes framed with fraught helplessness, and Stiles can't blame him for not finding the right words to make this better. "It would suck if you got hurt in all this."

"Making it worse," Stiles repeats, feeling a little hollow. "It's already bad. It's gotten worse and hasn't stopped getting worse since.” He rubs his thumb over his eyes. "Scott, what if he's dead?" There's no point in hiding it now, his cheeks are wet and his eyes are hot. "What if—"

"Hey," Scott cuts in, grabbing him and pulling him into a firm hug. "Don't go there yet."

Stiles knows he shouldn't, knows it's only making it all worse, but he can't help it, not when he’s been trying to keep his mind from going there all day. It’s exhausting, keeping panic at bay, shouldering it back, pretending it isn’t there, knocking, demanding to be felt.

"When am I supposed to?" Stiles asks, digging the heel of his hand over his eye over Scott's shoulder. "When we find his body parts in a dumpster somewhere? When his corpse shows up on the news?"

"That isn't going to happen," Scott tells him.

No, it will, it will. Stiles knows that it will. He can't unsettle this knot of dread in his stomach, and he can't think past it. This was bound to happen. Everything has been going so well and that really should've been a clue, because things with Peter don't ever go smoothly. They've been so happy and so in love and so synced up, and of course that couldn't last. It’s _Peter_ , for god’s sake, and it’s not like Stiles has ever been that lucky either.

"I just can't shake this feeling," Stiles says, "that we're not doing enough." He's getting Scott's shoulder all wet. "We're wasting time."

"We're doing the best we can," Scott promises. 

"I know, _I know_ , but what if it's not enough?" Stiles asks. "What if we try our best and we don't succeed?"

Scott pulls back from Stiles' arms, frowning slightly. "Is that—" His frown deepens. "Were you listening to Coldplay while we were gone?"

"I tried to put on something happy go lucky to cheer me up but shuffle didn't want to cooperate," Stiles says. He takes in a deep breath, the inhale stuttering on its way down his throat. "God, I'm tired." Tired, and somehow also unbelievably aware, stressed to the point of snapping, too many emotions storming up a tornado inside himself.

“Come on,” Scott says. “I can drive you home if you want.”

“No, I think I’ll stay,” Stiles says.

“You sure?”

Stiles nods. He wants to say that he’s cleaned up, that it’s all better here now, but it really isn’t. It still feels wrong and empty and almost unnerving being here, but he can’t imagine being anywhere else right now.

“Okay,” Scott says. “Do you want me to stay too?”

Stiles lets out a huff of flat laughter. “Sleepover at Peter’s place?” As entertaining and distracting as it might be, Stiles can’t imagine that Scott actually would want to be around him right now. He knows that Scott would do anything for him, be there for him whenever, but he’s drained, aching to do nothing but sleep, preferably until all this is over and someone will be shaking him awake with a big smile and a thumbs up saying that everything’s okay, Peter’s okay. “Another time, yeah? Maybe when I’m a little more fun to be around.”

“Stiles,” Scott starts.

“No, it’s really okay. I just want to sleep.” Stiles settles back against the wrinkled sheets, the coolness of the pillows. “I’ll text you tomorrow. I’ll check in.”

“Okay,” Scott says. His smile is a little less bright than it usually is as he squeezes Stiles’ arm and slips out of the bedroom, but Stiles appreciates him anyway, appreciates his unending effort. He just hopes to god that it’ll all pay off in the end.

\--

The next time he wakes up, sunlight is streaming through the windows and there’s a rattling at the door that sounds like a key sliding through the lock, the noise so familiar of Peter coming home and dropping his keys by the door and taking off his jacket that Stiles is instantly awake, desperate to hear him call out for Stiles and say good morning.

"Peter?" Stiles says, sitting up in bed like a jack-in-the-box popping open and snapping upright.

"No," Derek calls out from the hallway. His heavy footsteps sound, then he appears in the bedroom doorway, taking in Stiles' bedhead and the messy sheets twisted around him. "What are you doing here?"

"Sleeping," Stiles says, rubbing his face. "Waiting."

"You really shouldn't do that here," Derek says. "They might come back."

"They won't," Stiles says, and it comes out with a slightly bitter edge. It would almost make things easier if they would come back. Then they'd at least have perps and scents and a lead to follow instead of just their own tails. "They got what they wanted."

He drags his hands over his eyes, suddenly tired again. Maybe he should just keep sleeping, and eventually, _eventually_ , he’ll wake up and things will have magically fixed themselves and everything will be back to normal and Peter will be in the bed with him, chest pressed to Stiles’ back, and Stiles can stop feeling like he’s one push away from a gut-wrenching asthma attack.

“You don’t look so great,” Derek says, probably picking up on the constant storm cloud of anxiety wavering around Stiles’ head.

“Yeah, I don’t feel great.”

“When was the last time you ate?”

His stomach answers for him, as if on cue. It grumbles, reminding Stiles that his extremely sparse lunch from the day before is the last food he’s had, and if he doesn’t want to waste away, he should probably make breakfast a priority.

“Come on,” Derek says, throwing Stiles his hoodie. “Let’s get some food.”

\--

"This isn't what I thought you meant when you said getting food," Stiles says as Derek pulls the car into the parking lot of the nearest grocery store. "What are we doing here?"

"You need actual nutrients," Derek said, turning the car off. "You look terrible."

"Thanks," Stiles says dryly. He could've easily gone for greasy pancakes or whipped-cream-loaded waffles, but instead he gets to prowl around a grocery store at nine in the morning while Derek picks out fruit for him to eat. “Sure we can’t go somewhere that fries things?”

“No,” Derek says, getting out of the car.

Stiles sighs, following him. Derek’s probably right in the fact that he shouldn’t be eating anything oily that might upset his already queasy stomach, but that still doesn’t mean Stiles wants to be here, in a supermarket, feeling like a kid who’s refusing to eat his vegetables and needs his parents to force-feed him vitamins. 

"I couldn't sleep very well," he says, rubbing his eyes while they walk through the front doors. They feel unbelievably heavy, as if weighted down. There’s soft eighties music playing from the intercom and around him, people are picking out cantaloupes, tapping their knuckles on coconuts. He should’ve stayed in the car. "Kept waking up. Thinking I heard something. Thought he was there, but he wasn't."

When he looks up, Derek's giving him an odd look. "This is really bothering you."

Stiles frowns. "Nah. There's nothing to worry about in the least in a situation like this." He moves his hand to his forehead, rubbing at the lines of tension there. "It's not like Peter could be dead or murdered or hacked in five pieces somewhere and I have no clue about it."

Derek's eyebrows slant together. He clearly doesn't appreciate the sarcasm. "It's just... still surprising, that's all."

"What is?"

"How much you care about him."

Stiles huffs, because as offended as he probably should be, he understands Derek's surprise. Hell, there are mornings when he wakes up surprised at himself for who he's ended up with. The Stiles from a few years ago definitely wouldn't have felt this way about Peter going missing—he would've celebrated the peace that came with Peter leaving town, involuntarily or not. But things have changed, and people have changed, and Stiles' feelings have changed, and now he can't imagine a reality where he doesn't want to make sure Peter is safe.

"I get it, okay?" Stiles says. "But I'm pretty in love with him and yeah, I want him around, and yeah, this entire mess is kind of taking my insides and meat-grinding them."

He looks at the bananas, at the wall of peaches, at the shelves of cherries, and tries to feel a little less like combusting into a cloud of stress. Maybe Derek's right; maybe he desperately needs vitamin C and to take a deep breath. He starts with the deep breath.

Derek seems to mirror him, slowly exhaling. "He'll be all right."

Stiles glances up at him. "You really think so?"

"I do," he says. "Peter's survived worse than this. He's not that easy to get rid of."

Stiles smiles down at the oranges at that. If nothing else, he can't deny that that's true. Stiles doesn't know many people who've popped up from underneath old floorboards quite like Peter did, and then actually managed to make life stick. He's tough. Maybe not tough enough to survive everything, but as long as he's not headless in a ditch somewhere, he might be okay.

He follows Derek over to the watermelon table, rapping his fingertips on the hard shells while Derek picks a few of them up. He has to admit, it makes him chuckle, realizing that Derek apparently knows how to check watermelons and how to find the best one, and it feels good to laugh a little.

And then, out of nowhere, a few feet away—

“—he’s not going to fucking escape while we grab lunch. He’s being _watched_ , for god’s sake,” somebody’s saying. Next to him, Derek freezes, apparently finding the conversation just as interesting as Stiles.

“All I’m saying is we shouldn’t be so careless about it. He’s a werewolf, not some helpless dog.”

“Learn to fucking whisper, would you? The real problem is figuring out what to do with him from here on out.”

Stiles turns to Derek, chest tight, and just as he does, Derek’s grabbing him by the arm and yanking him down to crouch behind the watermelon stand, keeping out of sight. That has to be—there’s no way they’re not talking about—

"—could just throw him underground. Bury him alive and see how that works out."

"Are you crazy?" another voice says, a woman’s. "I'm not taking any chances. If we're throwing him underground, he better be dead."

Stiles opens his mouth to say something, do something, jump forward and take rage-fueled action, but then Derek slaps his palm over Stiles' lips to keep him quiet, eyes sending their own very loud, very clear message.

"We have to be careful," a third voice pipes up. "He could have someone looking for him. We can't just kill him and assume nobody will care."

"Then why the hell did we kidnap him in the first place?"

"Come on. A guy like that does not have people looking for him." A snicker. "Unless they're also looking to find the guy to give him a piece of their mind."

"Could you keep it down?" the second voice snaps. "Let's get what we need and get the fuck out of here."

Stiles arches over the fruit stand just enough to catch the back of three heads—one woman trailed by two men, all three in leather jackets that make them look like they’re cruising through town with their fellow biker gang. Stiles knows, he just _knows_ that this is who they’ve been looking for, that these are the creeps who have Peter locked up in a cell somewhere, and Derek’s hand seizing his wrist is the only thing keeping him from launching to his feet and doing—doing _something_.

“Holy shit,” he breathes. "Derek, that—that happened, right? I didn't just completely hallucinate that entire conversation?"

He's shaking, he's pretty sure he's violently shaking. Derek even looks a little on guard, face grim.

"It happened," Derek says.

"What the fuck do we do?"

“If they’re planning on burying him alive, we can let them do it. Wait until they leave and dig him out,” Derek says. “An average sized coffin holds at least an hour’s worth of air.”

“You heard them,” Stiles hisses. “They’re not going to put him under alive. And besides, I’m not—doing that to him.”

He swallows. Peter never outright told him as much, but Stiles can tell he isn’t entirely over his time spent underground. He remembers nights where he woke up because Peter was leaving the bed, skin cold, muttering about needing air when Stiles asked what was wrong, and Stiles knew he was thinking of the floorboards, the dirt, the smell of his own rotting flesh. If he was buried alive—Stiles couldn’t even imagine the darkness, the dampness, the lack of the oxygen, the oppressive silence below the earth.

“He would survive,” Derek tells him.

“No. It’s too damn risky. There has to be another way,” Stiles insists. “Don’t you have their scents now?”

“I’m not following them blindly, Stiles,” Derek says. “They’re clearly hunters. We have no idea how many of them there are total.”

“We can’t just do nothing,” Stiles shouts. Time is running out and it feels like nobody else cares, nobody else is _trying_. "I keep telling everybody that we're running out of time, and nobody's even listening!"

His voice reaches a crescendo by the end of the sentence, startling a few nearby shoppers out of their banal lives where nobody gets kidnapped and their partners aren't maybe or maybe not dead and the most important thing is whether or not the organic spinach is worth the extra fifty cents from the regular spinach. Stiles looks away from all the curious stares in his direction, realizing that he's crouched behind a rack of watermelons like an idiot. His legs are quivering, but he pushes himself up into a standing position anyway.

"Fuck this," Stiles tells Derek, and there comes that wetness again that's been plaguing his eyes for days, clouding his vision.

If he has to do this himself, _fine_. He's the only one taking this seriously, so he'll just take it upon himself, screw everybody else and their constant reminders to be careful and not rush and stay back. Somebody's life is at stake—somebody who's important to Stiles—and he isn't going to sit by any longer. If he hurries, he can still make it.

“Give me your keys,” he says to Derek.

“No.”

“Oh—for fuck’s sake.”

He snatches them out of Derek’s hand, not interested in playing nice here, and he runs out the store like he’s being chased, desperate to catch those three before they’re out the door, at least see where they’re going, what they’re doing.

He sees a glimpse of them in the middle of the parking lot, stopping in front of a green van and pushing their shopping bags into the backseat. Stiles doesn’t know if this is even a remotely good idea, but he can’t stop, he can’t hesitate now, so he runs over to Derek’s car and starts the engine with shaking hands. He can think about how Derek’s going to kill him later, right now he just has to focus on trailing that green car.

He follows it out of the parking lot pretty easily. He’s not exactly great at following cars, mostly because he’s just _so bad_ at being discreet about it, but luckily, it doesn’t seem like the green car’s inhabitants are aware of the fact that they have a tail, nothing about their driving suggesting that they’re trying to throw Stiles off. 

Stiles almost loses them when they take a sudden turn onto the highway, but he keeps them in his vision long enough to swerve back into the right lane and stay on their path. He’s just starting to wonder if they’re heading for the beach and Peter’s actually in the backseat in a body bag about to be thrown into the sea when the car slides onto an exit ramp right when they’ve reached the seedy part of town and comes to a stop in a motel parking lot.

Stiles screeches to a halt, watching the car empty out and all of them head for it, his heart in his throat. How the hell did he get away with that? Did he seriously just make some actual progress? He memorizes everything about the place—the weathered paint, the crumbling curb, the place’s name, the license plate of the van. 

He peels back out of the parking lot before anybody can get any wiser about his intentions here, speeding his way back to the highway. He isn’t going to charge in that motel without a single shred of preparation or back-up, just knock on the door and start asking about Peter’s whereabouts, but he’s coming back. Oh, is he _coming back_.

\--

When he comes back to the supermarket, Derek is less than pleased.

He’s standing in the parking lot, fuming, arms crossed tightly over his chest and eyes narrowed like the world’s angriest Driver’s Ed teacher. He yanks the driver’s door open the second Stiles comes to a stop and all but bodily catapults Stiles out of the seat, pulling him to his feet with a fistful of his shirt.

“What the fuck was that?” he growls. “Did you seriously just try and steal my car?”

“What? _No_ ,” Stiles says. “Okay, so I did, but that wasn’t the point—”

“You’re an idiot,” Derek cuts in. He looks angry enough to be able to boil potatoes in his mouth. “This—whatever the hell this is you’re doing, running around, driving after those creeps—it isn’t going to help anybody. It’s just going to get you killed.”

It occurs to Stiles that Derek’s caring, that this is Derek showing _concern_ , but Stiles can’t find it in himself to be flattered. Derek doesn’t get to be angry, Derek should be fucking _apologizing_ for not jumping in the car with Stiles and actually _helping_. He could’ve used a passenger a few times there on the highway to provide a second set of eyes; what he _doesn’t_ need is this lecture about being smart and responsible.

“And what? Standing around twiddling our thumbs _is_ gonna help?” Stiles tries to pull himself up to Derek’s size, to get that same fire in his eyes. “At least I’m doing something. At least I’m not just sitting on my ass waiting for Peter to show up.”

They stare at each other for a long, angry moment where they both seem to figure out whose rage is significantly stronger. Derek doesn’t give in, but he does breathe out slowly through his nose like he’s mentally counting down from ten, and points at the car.

“Get in,” he says, voice leaving no room for leeway. “In the _passenger seat_.”

Stiles does it, but not without slamming the car door shut with more force than necessary on the way in. He has the distinct feeling as he’s buckling up that Derek’s not going to let him out of his sight after this stunt, which is ridiculous, because he _finally got a little closer_ to actually figuring this out. He thinks about mentioning this, bringing up that he found a motel and he knows where they are now, but he’s fairly certain that Derek’s not going to want to hear it, most likely dismissing Stiles’ information with a useless excuse, something like _we can’t just storm in aimlessly_ or _we don’t know if we’d be outnumbered or not_ or blah blah blah, some other pointless reason to stay behind and just hope for the best. For all they know, Peter could be in that motel, right in fucking front of them, and every second they don’t check, they’re just wasting time.

All right. He’ll do this on his own. He’ll find a way.

\--

Derek drops him back off at Peter’s apartment with a sackful of grapefruits and an extremely sour last look, surprising Stiles greatly by not following him up the stairs and shackling him to the fridge so he doesn’t cause more trouble. He seems to be more interested in shaking Stiles off than supervising him, which is about the only stroke of luck Stiles has had in a while.

He spends the day trying to work out a plan. He knows where these goons are, all he has to do now is figure out a way to safely infiltrate enemy camp. He’s going to think tank and research and brainstorm the fuck out of this until he has a solid idea.

It’s okay for the first few hours, and then it starts becoming one big blur of brainwave after brainwave until he has an ocean of ideas flooding over him, none of them that good, but he tries to stick with it, fixing the bits that don’t work, combining plans, patching problems. He’s at a point where he’s trying to remember how everybody saved Han in Star Wars when he realizes he might be working his brain a little too hard, and the next thing he knows, he’s sleeping on top of a countertop of scribbled plans that seem like real winners.

When he wakes up, he has a stack of opened books in front of him he's been using as a pillow and papers everywhere with the scribbles of half-baked, after-midnight plots drawn on them, no longer quite as smart as they seemed a few hours ago, and there are three people on the opposite side of the desk watching him.

"Jesus fucking—" Stiles nearly topples out of the desk chair, vigorously rubbing his eyes. Isaac and Derek and Scott are all still standing there, looking down at him like three very disapproving parents. "What the hell are you three doing here? Other than scaring the bejesus out of me."

"Keeping watch," Derek says. "We've been switching off for the last few nights."

" _Derek_ ," Scott says sharply, like it had been a secret they didn't want Stiles to have to know.

"Why shouldn't he know? His pride will survive."

"I don't need goddamn _guard dogs_ ," Stiles says. "Actually, that fits right in with a plan I came up with last night." He rummages around looking for the sheet of paper he had scribbled his plan onto. He finds it, wrinkled and slightly smudged, by the pile of books. "Okay, so. I go and get him."

"What?"

"I go to the motel and I talk with his kidnappers for a bit and I charm the hell out of them and I convince them to let me see him and then I break him out. Easy."

"No," Derek says immediately. "None of that is a good idea. You're not doing it."

"That's what you spent all night working on?" Isaac asks.

"It's _brilliant_ ," Stiles insists.

“No, it’s really not. It’s brainless,” Derek says. His eyes narrow. “Did you even eat the grapefruits?”

No, he didn’t, but that’s beside the point. He doesn’t need nutrition and he doesn’t need to waste time peeling his food; he needs support and teamwork and someone to throw this energy he’s got going around with him for a while, find a way to better his plan if it’s allegedly so terrible right now, according to everybody else.

“Okay, so how about this,” Stiles says, trying to find another piece of paper—some of these _have_ to be good. They can’t all be garbage. “I bait myself. I’m the bait. They capture me too. We communicate through walkie-talkie in case you can’t follow my scent.”

“You need sleep,” Scott says, coming up next to Stiles and touching his arm. How is that possible? He just slept. Stiles shakes him off, checking his watch, lopsided on his wrist.

“No, it’s good,” Stiles insists. “You guys were all saying they might come for me. Might as well make that a sure thing.”

“ _No_.”

“Okay, _fine_ ,” he says. He’s going to crumple up every piece of paper here and throw it at all their heads like basketball practice. “Do any of you have any bright ideas? No? I didn’t think so.”

“Seriously, Stiles. You need to calm down,” Derek says.

“No, you guys all need to be a little _less_ calm.”

Somehow, without him approving, Scott ends up bringing him over the couch, guiding him back against the pillows and offering him water. It’s infuriating, how everybody’s acting like Stiles is being melodramatic and working himself into a useless tizzy. It’s not useless. It’s important. And he needs to keep _thinking_ , keep working toward that breakthrough. Like helicoptering Peter to safety. He hasn’t considered any kind of aircraft yet.

“We’ll figure this out, okay?” Scott says. He sounds awfully sure for someone has no shred of a plan in place, but Stiles really wishes he could believe him. “We don’t need you putting yourself in danger here.”

They turn on the TV to obviously try and distract Stiles while Scott puts a meal together for Stiles to eat, which he does more so because everybody’s watching him rather than out of actual appetite. He knows he’s close to a good idea. 

All right, so maybe baiting won’t work. Maybe he’ll be setting them all up for a very clean mass murder if he dangles himself out there like a carrot on a stick and gets himself captured.

There has to be something he’s missing, some great idea, some missing detail that could make all this work. Maybe he’s coming at this all wrong—he keeps approaching the situation as the enemy, maybe he should come at it from a different angle. Keep your friends close, your enemies closer, implement that kind of blind stupidity that he spent most of high school trying to avoid.

Suddenly. he remembers something one of those goons had said back at the supermarket, something about how nobody would be looking for Peter unless to give him a piece of their mind.

Holy shit. He might have a way in.

\--

The plan he ends up with is simple. It’s also genius, and sure to work, and all Stiles has to do is execute it properly.

He also can’t tell anybody else about it. He’s pretty sure that every single one of them will either a) point out nonexistent flaws, b) refuse to let him go, or c) demand to come along, which would ruin the entire thing. The last thing he wants is to overwhelm these kidnappers into packing up all their stuff and grabbing Peter and leaving Beacon Hills because they’re starting to get an inkling that people are onto them because Stiles and all his hunking werewolf friends approach at once. No. It just has to be him, only him.

It’s easy. Step one: he goes back to the motel. Step two: he waits for somebody from that green car to come along. Step three: he convinces them he’s a fellow hunter with a grudge against Peter Hale that’s like a thorn in his side (he’s pretty positive that the bit about loathing Peter will be the most believable part of this entire charade). Step four: under the pretense of joining in on the torture, he’ll be led to Peter, and then promptly rescue him when nobody’s looking. It’s all so, so, so very straightforward. Impossible to mess up.

But just in case, he finds a safety net.

"Listen," Stiles says once he has Lydia on Skype. "I'm only telling you this because you're the only one who can't stop me."

" _What?_ "

"You would if you were here, but you're not, and you can't catch a flight fast enough. Unless you find a way to change the laws of time."

"Stiles, what's going on?"

"I'm about to do something possibly stupid. But I have to." He leans in closer to the screen. "I just need to make sure someone knows. So if you don't hear from me in twenty-four hours, tell everybody I'm probably in trouble."

"Are you making me an accomplice in a hare-brained scheme?" Lydia asks, not sounding or looking particularly thrilled.

"Just give me twenty-four hours."

"What?"

"That's it. It's not that long."

Her lips press together tightly. "You could die very easily in that amount of time, you know. In several different ways, even."

"Just promise me," he begs. "If everything goes according to plan, I won't die."

"Nothing ever goes according to plan, Stiles. Not with you." Lydia looks worried, so much so that Stiles almost starts to feel a bit uneasy, but then she sighs, runs a hand through her hair, and says, "I'll give you twelve hours."

"Fifteen."

"No."

"The more you argue, the less time I'm giving you," Lydia says. "Ten."

"Just _wait_ ,” Stiles says. “Just give me some time, and then call Scott when you think it’s right. Can you do that?”

She looks at him with doubt, concern clear on her face, and Stiles is pretty sure he’s teetering right on the edge of having her convinced versus her calling Stiles’ father to tattle tale on his idiotic ideas. She seems to tilt in favor of the former, though, giving in with a sigh.

“Fine,” she says. “Even though this is probably a terrible idea and you really should rethink it. All of it.”

He knows that she’s right, but the bottom line is that he really doesn’t have the time. His body is taut with nerves, sleep doing little to relax him lately, and he’s so unbelievably aware of the fact that every second he stays stagnant, Peter could be that much closer to bleeding out, to dying, to no longer being in Stiles’ life. He doesn’t have the time to strategize and be clever about this and keep aces in his pocket to pull out at just the right times, he just has to _go_ and hope it works out.

“Noted,” Stiles says.

“And since we both know you’re not going to do that,” Lydia says, sighing again, “go ahead and tell me your plan.”

\--

He drives to the motel. He’s shaking the entire time, repeatedly telling himself that he can pull this off, _he can do this_ , he will not die here where no one will find him. He practically has a degree in bullshitting; he can convince a few hunters that he’s one of them and wants Peter’s head on a stick. He’s not even that far off from a hunter, what with the knowledge he has, except that he typically ends up working for the opposite side as far as who hunters are usually hunting. Semantics. He just won’t mention that little fact.

The green car he followed before is still where he saw it last when he makes it to the motel parking lot. He leaves a little apology note to his father stuffed in the glove box just in case, just your classic _sorry I was stupid and got murdered_ post-it, and forces himself to stop waffling around.

He gets out of his Jeep and approaches the green van, peeking in the windows. There’s nothing suspicious in the car, no people-shaped lumps under tarps or anything of the like, but he’s pretty sure that if he opened the trunk and lifted the cover to the compartment behind the seats, he’d find rows and rows of army-quality weapons. All he has is a Swiss Army knife in his pocket, and briefly, he considers how long that’ll hold up against gunfire should that be a situation he finds himself in.

He doesn’t have too much time to think about just how under-prepared he is, because just then, something rounds the motel’s corner and notices Stiles leaning against the van.

“Who the hell are you?”

Stiles almost jumps out of his skin. It’s one of the guys from the supermarket yesterday—that leather is easily recognizable—and Stiles isn’t sure if he should be glad his scheme is going according to plan so far or fucking terrified that it is.

“Oh, hey,” Stiles says, trying his best to ignore the loud, rapid-fire beat of his heart. “Have a moment?”

The guy says absolutely nothing, his expression unmoving from its tough frown.

Stiles keeps going. “You—you’re the guy who got Peter Hale, right?”

The man’s face flickers with a second’s worth of shock, then sculpts itself straight back into hardness. He crosses his arms across his chest, Stiles noting that his hands are white fists where they’re tucked into his elbows. “What?”

He just has to go for it, Stiles thinks. He can’t hesitate or he’ll screw it up, and he really only has one chance here.

“Word’s been going around town that you caught him,” he says. “At least, around people like me. Like us.”

“Like us?”

“Yeah,” Stiles says. He swallows, and he’s pretty sure the whole world can hear it. If he doesn’t deliver this right, he might as well just start running now. “Hunters.” The guy still hasn’t stopped frowning, still hasn’t stopped glaring at Stiles like he can tell that every single word he’s saying is a lie, but he has to commit, he can’t let the story crumble now. “How many guys did it take for you to catch him?”

He’s going to be beaten up, he’s very much aware of this at this moment. This guy is _beefy_ , the kind of muscled creep who could probably rip the limbs off of ogres in one clean yank. He sucks in a breath that his lungs are reluctant to let out, his entire body strained, stiff, wondering why the hell he thought this would work, and then—

“Four,” the guy says. “He’s a tricky son of a bitch to pin down.”

A fraction of the tension in Stiles’ spine loosens, even as hot anger pulses through him as he realizes he’s staring at the face of the guy who thought it would be okay to rip Peter out of his life, out of _Stiles’_ life, and then joke about it. He can’t lose it, though, can’t just blindly tackle this bastard for what he’s put Stiles through the last few days, so he does his best to stay in character and gives a light chuckle.

“That sounds like him,” he says. “I’ve been trying for a few months now to grab him and give him a piece of my mind.”

“Yeah? What’d he do to you?”

Stiles thanks years of pulling bullshit out of his ass for the answer he whips out of thin air. “Got my sister, my dad, my mom,” he says. “And almost killed my best friend.” Okay, that part is true, but that’s really more of an all’s-well-that-ends-well story. “What about you?”

“Not me,” the guy says. Dear god, is he large. He could flatten Stiles in a nanosecond. “But the gal I’m working with here—she’s had some personal ties to the jackass. Killed her husband, or her brother, or something.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Guy doesn’t have a heart.”

_He does_ , Stiles wants to yell. It’s not on his sleeve, and you have to dig a little to find it, but it’s there, it’s beating, and Stiles knows it. He tries his best to nod, to laugh, to not do the stupid thing and throttle the guy—pretty sure he’d end up on his back, paralyzed, in a second—and keeps playing along.

“Pretty impressive that you got him,” Stiles says. “Are you keeping him here in Beacon Hills, or?”

“Here,” he says. “Although not for long, if you get my drift.”

“What, you’re—you’re letting him go?”

The guy laughs. “Not quite. Plan is to put him six feet under soon.”

A hot slice of panic drags up his throat, leaving a lump he can’t quite swallow around. “That’s good to hear,” he says, even as he’s slowly getting sick to his stomach. “Before you do, though, do you think you could let me talk to him? Kinda get some closure for what he did? Maybe throw in a few punches too?”

Stiles seesaws on the balls of his feet, smiling, doing his best to toe the line between unassuming and capable hunter, wondering if he’s about to be seen through, if he’s not being believable enough. The way this guy is looking at him is funny, like he’s seen him before—he didn’t notice him at the grocery store, did he? Maybe while Stiles was tailing him?—but can’t quite place him. Stiles is starting to get the bad feeling that he shouldn’t have come here.

“Why not,” he finally says, shrugging. “C’mon.”

He turns away from the car, beckoning Stiles to follow him. Stiles can’t shake the gut instinct to not follow, to turn around now and call Scott and just tell him that he fucked up, but he’s close, he can _feel_ how close he is. He’s a hair’s breath away from finding Peter, and he just has to pull through these last few inches. He’s so close.

Stiles follows the guy around the corner of the motel, down a long wall, into a breezeway, until they’re standing in front of a motel room. Number fifteen. The letters are peeling a little, the place clearly not in great condition, and again, Stiles has to stomp down the reflex screaming inside of him to back away and find another way to do this. Regroup.

Stiles stares at the ratty door. "He's in there?"

"Yeah. I’ll let you rough him up a bit,” the guy says, and his smile is so genuine that Stiles really thinks he might be sick. “Have fun.”

He hands Stiles the keycard. A second later, everything goes black.

\--

When the void of black fades, his forehead is _pounding_ , like someone decided pressing it between a thigh master would be a good idea, and his hands are tied behind his back, a punch of panic working through him as he realizes exactly what’s happened to him. He twists his wrists, getting a feel for how tight his binds are and trying to get enough leeway to reach the Swiss Army knife in the back of pants—

“It’s gone,” someone is saying, sounding bored.

Stiles’ head snaps up. There’s a woman standing in front of him, arms crossed, with what looks an awful lot like a tool belt full of torture devices around her hips. She has the kind of sharp, annoyed tick to her movements that seems to suggest that she’s itching to kill or at least maim someone, like she’s been put on supervision duty with Stiles and is starting to get bored of the inactivity. She must be the bosslady Stiles heard about earlier, the one with the murderous grudge and nothing to lose who he saw at the grocery store. _Great_. What a marvelous person to be next to when he’s bound, bloodied, and dizzy.

He tries to breathe, to relax, to not immediately disintegrate into a downward spiral. He takes in his surroundings—a nondescript bed, a curtained window, a noisy radiator. He’s in a motel room, maybe even the one he was close to entering right before his friend from earlier must’ve clocked him over the head. All right, so apparently he hadn’t been convincing enough as a hunter.

“What?” he asks.

“The Swiss Army knife in your back pocket,” she says. “We took it.”

Stiles feels his panic level roll up a few notches.

“As much as I appreciate the pat down,” he says, trying not to struggle too blatantly with his restraints, “I think there’s been a slight misunderstanding. I’m one of you guys.”

“You aren’t.”

“I _am_ ,” Stiles insists. 

“Your picture is in his wallet.”

“ _What_?”

“Your picture,” she says, mouth moving slowly as she speaks, “is tucked into his wallet. Interested in explaining that?”

_Fuck_. Of all the times for Peter to be a sentimentalist—god, that’s not even true, Peter is always finding ways to surprise Stiles with how much of a fucking romantic he is. Of course he has a picture of Stiles in his wallet. He’s probably naked and grinning like a loon in it to make matters worse.

“There's no way that's me,” Stiles says, ready to carry this to the end.

"It's a good plan," the woman says, folding her arms across her chest. "I'll give you that much. Infiltrate the enemy and then sneak out your friend." She casts him a side-along look. "Or is it lover?"

"I don't know him any better than you," Stiles says.

"I'd say you know him quite well," she says, ignoring him. She starts playing with something she picks up from the counter behind her, which turns out to be Stiles' Swiss Army knife. She runs her nail along one of the blades, flicking it in and out of its spot. "And you're here to rescue him. Shame it won't happen that way." She smiles. "But great for us."

Stiles twitches. "Why is that?"

"You know what's better than murdering someone? When you really want to leave an impression, anyway." She walks a little closer to Stiles, knife still in hand, and there goes that panic level again, spiking higher like a Geiger counter screeching to a peak. "See, when you're dead, you're dead, but when you're alive... That's where the pain happens."

Stiles doesn't like where this is going. Not at all. He swallows, and she seems to hear it, leaning in closer, hands on her knees.

"You know, none of us thought Peter would actually have someone whom he cares about," she says. "I wonder how he'd feel if something happened to that someone."

Stiles can't believe this is happening; he can't believe Derek was right about this and he's about to be sacrificed for the sake of Peter's torture. He thinks about that Skype call with Lydia and takes a moment to stop and hope that she's going to follow through on her end of the plan. How much time has even passed since then? How long was he out for?

"I told you," Stiles says through his teeth, wondering if he's fooling anyone at this point. "I don't know him. I'm on your side."

"We can put that to the test, if you'd like," she offers. "You think Peter has the same story?"

Stiles grinds his teeth. His plan is crumbling like cigarette ash and why, _why_ didn't he think up a back-up scheme?

"Yes," he grits out, keeping eye contact with this snake of a woman.

"Let's see," she says.

And that's the last Stiles sees before he's knocked back unconscious.

\--

When he comes to again, it's to someone repeatedly slapping his face.

"Jeez. Why do you always have to hit so hard?" someone's saying. It sounds like the beefcake from before that Stiles tried to fool. “You want him unconscious, or do you want him amnesiac?”

"I know what I’m doing,” the woman from before responds. She still sounds bored. "Look. He's waking up."

A hand slaps his cheek a few more times again as if to confirm, and Stiles twists away, woozy and annoyed and now in worse pain than before. He’s still tied to a chair, his wrists really starting to chafe against the rope, and the room he’s in now is different than the one before, still the same wallpaper and the same motel, but a different layout to the furniture. Someone slaps him a couple more times for good measure.

"If you touch him again, I'm going to kill you," Peter growls, sounding exactly like Stiles feels, and—

Wait a moment, _Peter_?!

Stiles' eyes rip open, and sure enough, tied to a chair a few feet away is Peter, bloody and beaten and definitely not the healthiest he's ever looked, but _alive_. There's purple powder on his clothes and there's a circle of mountain ash around him, to say nothing of the arrow that seems to be sticking out of his leg, but he's still alive, and he's still threatening people, and that has to account for something. Stiles uses all of his self-restraint to keep from kicking and screaming and crying out in relief just at seeing Peter’s face, keeping the emotion hidden and focusing on anything other than Peter just a few feet away from him. That throbbing pain in his head is doing a pretty good job of distracting him, so he starts there.

"You're not in a position to kill anyone, dear," the woman says, and God, Stiles hates people who use the word _dear_ like that. Anyone who isn't a sweet grandma should keep that word out of their mouth. "And honestly, Peter. You should be ashamed of yourself. Stiles over here went to great lengths to pretend to be your mortal enemy, and you've ruined his little show."

Stiles groans, both out of pain and frustration that he and Peter aren't telepathically gifted. That headache of his from earlier has amped up to what feels like tectonic plates shifting behind his eyes, and if he wasn't in such a dire situation, he wouldn't hesitate to complain about it.

"I really do hate him," Stiles says, and in that moment, it's a little bit true if nothing else. He hates how Peter gets kidnapped more than the average civilian. He hates that Peter has pissed off so many people that Stiles has spent the last few days imagining himself having to watch Peter's coffin be lowered into the ground. He hates that being with Peter means the possibility of something like this repeating itself is infinitely higher than it would be with literally anybody else. Jesus Christ, does he _hate him_.

"Then why are you naked in his wallet?"

And he _hates_ that Peter is the type of person to keep racy photographs of Stiles on his person.

"Peter, I can't fucking believe you," he moans.

"Me?" Peter says, and he has the gall to sound equally upset. "What about you? What the fuck are you doing here?"

"Rescuing your helpless ass, that's what the fuck I'm doing," Stiles shouts. "I told you this would happen, _I told you_."

"And what would you like me to do about that, Stiles?" Peter says through his teeth.

My god, this is not the time to be quarreling like an old married couple. They have serious problems on hand here, like the fact that the ruse Stiles has been sticking to like glue is officially busted, and now not only is he weaponless, but everybody in the room knows that he and Peter are each other's vulnerabilities all because of Peter’s need to keep R-rated photographs in his wallet. How did things get so shitty so fast? He had _such a good plan._

"And I'm not helpless," Peter's continuing on.

Stiles looks at him, seething. Peter's brutally injured and tied to a chair with his werewolf abilities smothered by wolfsbane and Stiles doesn't have time to argue with him about the level of control he has over the situation. His ropes are starting to really dig into his wrists and his forehead is throbbing and he's probably going to die, so his patience is wearing a little thin.

"Shut up, Peter," Stiles says. "For the love of God, shut up and stop making things worse."

A blade pressing into the side of Stiles' neck makes him shut up, too, heart racing as the woman from earlier leans her elbow on his shoulder, humming by his ear. "How about both of you close your mouths," she suggests, "and try and keep some of your dignity?"

The knife reminds Stiles that _there are other people here_ , not just he and Peter in a musty motel room having a bad weekend. He looks around, realizing that they’re fairly outnumbered. There’s the bulldozer of a woman currently accosting Stiles who he assumes is the kingpin, and then there’s two men standing by Peter’s chair who, what they seem to be lacking in leadership, are making up with muscle. One of them has what looks like a prison-made shiv in his hand, ready to strike if Peter makes a run for it, and the other is Stiles’ acquaintance from before, who is keeping a close eye on Peter’s binds.

“So imagine our surprise, Peter,” the woman says, “that you have someone _important_ in your life.” She keeps the knife exactly where it is and Stiles tries to think about something, _anything_ his father might have told him over the years about what to do when a criminal is ambushing him with something sharp that could kill him in seconds. “So who is he to you? Someone you get in your bed every now and then? Someone you actually care about?”

“What does it matter?”

“Oh, it matters a great deal. We really want to make it sting for you when we kill him.”

“I have another idea,” Stiles says, starting to panic. “How about we _don’t_ kill anyone? You know, just try it on for size? See what happens?”

Peter's mouth twitches. "I don’t care about anyone,” he says, voice hard. “We sleep together now and again. That’s it.”

And it’s definitely been a while since either of them has denied their relationship like this, and under any other earthly occasion, it might sting a bit, but right now, Stiles is fervently nodding along in agreement.

“Yes. _Yes_. I hardly know anything about him.”

“Of course,” the woman says. “Which is why you pretended to be hunting him in order to see him.” The knife wedges in a little harder, and holy shit, Stiles is about to bleed out in a shitty motel all because he decided to associate himself with the likes of Peter. “Why don’t we cut the bullshit and go straight to the truth?”

"All right," Stiles gasps out, hands shaking, mouth shaking, _everything_ shaking like an earthquake is pushing through him. "I don't hate him, I love him, okay?" He tries to suck in a breath that doesn't move the knife pressing against his skin. "I know that you guys are angry, especially you, with the knife and the dead husband, but _come on_ , we've all lost people. Just do what everybody else does and listen to some Bon Iver and move on."

"Stiles, stop," Peter cuts in.

"No!" He wrenches his eyes open. "If I'm about to be killed because of you, I'm not going _quietly_." He looks at the people in front of him, at all the things in their hands that could kill him in a medley of different ways like something out of a long lost Shakespeare play, and wonders if this is really how it's all going to end. Somehow he always knew that Peter would be responsible, the bastard. "Listen, I get it. I didn't like him once either. He killed off half the town and terrorized my best friend and all of us just wanted him gone and by now—I don't even know when it changed, but he's become that person that I send texts to about my day because I want to keep him updated."

Everybody is staring at him, and he refuses to make eye contact with anybody. He can't tell what their expressions mean, if they're touched or surprised or just stunned into silence. The only way to know, he thinks, is to keep going.

"And even though he's the type of asshole who keeps naked pictures of me in his wallet, he's really kind of incredible. And he's _come so far_ , and—if only you knew, seriously.” Stiles takes in a breath. “He went from being the kind of guy who I wanted to throw in a body bag into the sea to being one who has a custom ringtone in my phone.” He doesn’t know why he’s saying all this, maybe it’s some sort of inevitable psychological response to meeting his end, some need to get it all out. “He started _caring_ somewhere along the way and of all people to care about, he picked _me_ , and I think that’s. It was _nice_.”

He glances across the room at Peter, who’s looking at him with that same soft, awed, amazed expression he gives him every time Stiles makes it clear that he cares about him, he cares _so much_ , cares to the point of stupidity.

"That was a moving speech," the woman says, breaking up the silence and releasing the hold her knife has on Stiles’ throat, and for a moment, she seems convinced that maybe she should put an end to this murderous, illegal kidnapping scheme, but then she fiddles around in her back pocket, retrieving a gun, and Stiles instantly realizes that he's very, very wrong. "Too bad it doesn't change anything."

She takes the gun and aims it at Stiles, rotating around from his knees, his arm, his chest, then his shoulder, as if testing out where she’d first like to shoot him. All of Stiles’ childhood fantasies of living through a gunshot wound and being able to tell the grisly tale of his encounter with a dangerous weapon suddenly seem stupid and completely brainless, and he wrestles against the holds of his chair, realizing that Peter’s doing the same, except his struggling is accompanied with a growling that sounds less than human.

"If you kill him," Peter says, and his voice is no longer one hundred percent his own, a fair amount of wolf rearing its head in flickers, the wolfsbane still too powerful for anything more, "this isn't the end. I'll return the favor. I swear to god, I'll rip all of you apart."

And there's a part of Stiles that wants to see that happen, who thinks it's sort of sweet that Peter would do that for him, would avenge him like he did his family, and then there's another part, the rational part, that doesn't want Peter starting up revenge spree number two and regressing, because he's been so good, he's tried so hard, he's come _so far_ , and Stiles doesn't want to see all that effort and progress waste away because some crazed hunters decided killing an innocent civilian was a mandatory chore they had to fulfill.

“Peter, you really shouldn’t,” Stiles says, desperate to at least get that out there.

“I will,” Peter growls, ignoring him. “I'll kill you all. And I'll take my time with it. Don't—don't even fucking breathe on him.”

Stiles can't believe the last things he gets to hear on this earth is Peter threatening someone's life. He also can't believe the last sensations he feels are bound wrists and a pounding head and unbelievable regret for not taking along someone larger and stronger on this rescue mission, but if he had to die for something—and honestly, it definitely became infinitely likelier when he dipped his foot into the pool of lycanthropy all those years ago—dying for someone he loves a pretty scary amount isn't so bad.

Okay, yeah, it's pretty bad, but it could be a lot worse.

He closes his eyes, trying to calm himself into believing this, and does his best to block out the audible sounds of Peter struggling, snarling, and wonders if he might really be able to come back as a ghost and haunt the shit out of these terrible people. And maybe also flicker Peter’s lights now and again just to be a little shit.

And that's when the motel door bangs open and Scott and Derek come bursting in, and Stiles opens his eyes, and even just the sight of them makes Stiles want to cry out of sheer joy. Scott tackles the powerhouse with a gun and Derek works on the two Stabbington brothers next to Peter, not that Stiles can concentrate on anything but the fact that he’s no longer staring down the barrel of his own grisly death.

The fight doesn’t last very long, or at least to Stiles, it seems to flash by. The werewolves clearly have the advantage, and even with that mob boss of a woman fighting tooth and nail, Scott is able to knock her out just as Isaac comes in carrying an unconscious fourth guy that must’ve been guarding the door and Derek runs the two muscleheads he was throwing punches with into the wall. Stiles has never, ever been happier that his life is one giant shower of unsuspecting luck, and for a moment, not even the throbbing head wound hurts.

"Holy shit," Stiles says, all the adrenaline and the fear and the jackhammer beat of his heart making it hard to focus as Scott, all the fingernail scrapes and bite marks he just got battling that woman already healing, runs over to him to untie the ropes around his hands. "How are you—how did you—"

"Lydia," Scott says, smile wide and relieved.

Stiles lets his eyes shut. "Oh my god," he says, wondering how the hell he has so much dumb luck on his side. Seriously. How has he not died yet. "For once I am so fucking glad that she didn't listen to me."

There's no way it's been ten hours. Stiles will bet money that she called Scott minutes after Stiles hung up their Skype call, agreement be damned.

“Are you okay?” Scott asks when he rounds the chair to work on Stiles’ legs, and yes, _yes_ , Stiles is definitely okay. Scott’s hand briefly comes up to touch a smear of blood on Stiles’ forehead, wincing. “That doesn’t look good.”

“I feel amazing,” Stiles says, and he couldn’t be more honest. “It’ll heal eventually and I feel fine and I’m just so fucking relieved.” He looks over to see if anybody’s seen to Peter’s ropes yet, and just as he does, Peter’s getting up and is sweeping over to him with a fierce, fuming determination in his eyes and pulling him to his feet, and despite his clear attempt to convey his anger, Stiles can’t help but think that he’s never looked less threatening, what with the hobble in his impaled leg and the purple dust covering him head to toe and the uncoordinated rage written all over him as he grabs Stiles’ cheeks.

“Don’t you ever, _ever_ do something so _brainless_ ever again,” Peter says, framing Stiles’ face. He sounds angry and protective and relieved all at once, which about sums up how Stiles feels too. "What happened to your _common sense?_ "

"I could say the same thing to you, you asshole,” Stiles says, feeling all the same emotions Peter seems to be, the wash of them storming over him almost overwhelming. “How stupid can you be to get yourself kidnapped, especially when you always talk about what a big bad werewolf you are, talk about _no common sense_.”

The words have no real heat, which Peter seems to know, his thumbs brushing back and forth over and over on Stiles’ cheeks, eyes moving rapidly over his face to check for proof that he’s actually alive and standing.

“Are you all right?” he asks.

There’s still that arrow sticking out of Peter’s leg, literally _protruding from his thigh_ , and Stiles thinks that probably takes priority to his little bump on the head. He laughs, but it comes out as hysterical sobs, every part of him feeling like it’s on fire in the best way right now, like stepping into a hot bath after being stuck in the cold, everything tingling, everything alive. Peter seems to take that as a yes, because then he's crushing Stiles against his chest in a hug so tight it's almost hard to breathe, but Stiles doesn't care, isn't even thinking about anything other than how good it feels to feel Peter, hold him, smell him, touch him.

"You should really get that arrow out," Stiles mumbles on Peter's shoulder. "And maybe also dust yourself off."

Peter doesn't have any interest in listening, nor does he have any interest in letting go of him. He keeps Stiles pressed to his chest like he's trying to fuse their bodies together, hands tight on Stiles' back and breath warm on Stiles' skin.

“—the _stupidest_ person I’ve ever met,” Peter’s saying into Stiles’ neck, punctuating his words by digging his fingers into Stiles’ shoulder blades. “That was dumb beyond belief, do you hear me?”

“Shut up,” Stiles says, caught between laughing and crying and never letting Peter go again, the feel of his frantic heartbeat between their chests so calming, more calming than it logically should be, but it works for Stiles.

“You’re never doing that again,” Peter says, mouth murmuring it over and over into Stiles’ hair. Stiles just holds on, half-heartedly agrees because _you never know_ , and squeezes him back just as hard.

\--

The police shows up, and then the ambulances, and for a good hour, Stiles is just sitting in the back of trucks giving statements and following the bright lights shone in his eyes while someone cleans up the wound on his head and the cuts on his neck. For once, _for once_ , he doesn’t have to make up some elaborate story about what happened and what he was doing here in order to save his friend’s asses—he gets to just tell the truth, and say that he was rescuing his kidnapped boyfriend, and point fingers at the hunters who get carted off into the back of a police car in handcuffs.

He and Peter get separated in the process, but between the police radio chatter and the questions being asked at him, Stiles can hear bits and pieces of Peter going through the same drills with other EMTs. He keeps wanting to twist around and watch, see if Peter’s okay, see if everybody else is okay, but they all seem to be, and Stiles is—not for the first time—unbelievably grateful that things turned out so well.

Derek comes over to him at one point when Stiles is done reassuring his father that yes, he realizes what he did was stupid, and no, he won’t do it again, and he glances over Stiles’ treated injuries, at all the various bandages and bruises scattered around his body.

“Hey,” Stiles tells Derek. “Thanks again.”

“You’re welcome,” Derek says. “Don’t make a habit of it.”

“Are you kidding me?” Stiles huffs. “After all the times I’ve saved your ass over the years, you still owe like—three, four? Maybe even five rescues? This is a drop in the freaking bucket.”

Derek’s eyes roll upward, but he doesn’t seem to have a rebuttal to offer, which Stiles takes as a personal win. Whatever. He knows perfectly well that Derek will help out no matter how many times Stiles ends climbing out on a wobbly limb and needs last-minute saving, and everybody else as well. It’s a reminder that Stiles thinks he sorely needed after what happened with Peter. For the last few days, it was nothing but hysteria, panic, blaming everybody for not doing enough, not trying enough, but in the end, everyone came through, and if nothing else, it’s reminding Stiles to have a little more trust in his friends. Maybe even in Peter, who might’ve found a way out by himself given enough time.

Not likely. But Stiles has the distinct feeling that’s what Peter wants everybody to think.

“So I just talked to Peter,” Derek says. "Do you know what he said to me back there?"

"What?"

"He thanked me for saving your life," Derek says. He lets out a single dry puff of a laugh. "He's never genuinely thanked me for anything in his life."

"I—oh." Stiles feels his cheeks heat up, then the rest of his face. "Well, I wasn't the one who needed saving."

"You were," Derek disagrees. "You both were. Neither one of you ever _thinks_." He shakes his head, like he's amazed that they're all still alive after this, and ignores Stiles' affronted _hey!_ "Maybe you actually are good together.”

“Yeah, I keep coming to that conclusion,” Stiles says, and he smiles at his knees. Derek definitely didn’t phrase that as a compliment but he’s taking it as one anyway. “Sorry if I was kind of…” He waves his hand around, unable to properly explain. “…weird? These last few days.”

“You mean stressed? Panicked?” Derek says. “Considering how hysterical you can get on a good day, I wasn’t surprised.”

“You’re just full of compliments today.”

“What I’m here for, obviously.”

Peter walks over then, apparently done being examined and questioned, and he gives Derek a quick nod of recognition before he comes over to the truck Stiles is sitting on the edge of and immediately wraps him up in his arms, breathing out slowly over the top of his head. Stiles tries to say something and gets a mouthful of Peter’s shirt, which still tastes a little musty, a little wolfsbane-esque.

“Hey,” Stiles says, voice muffled against the fabric. “Careful with the precious cargo. I’m wounded here.”

“Mm,” Peter says, not easing up his hold. “This hug too brutal for you?”

Stiles smirks, snorting into Peter’s shirt and circling his arms around Peter’s waist. “It’s okay,” he says. “Can we go home?”

He doesn’t specify which home, which place. He just wants to go somewhere with Peter, pretty much anywhere where he can spread out on top of him like a sticky sea creature and nobody will be around to judge or tell them they’re being indecent in public. One of Peter’s hands nudges at Stiles’ knee until his legs spread to accommodate Peter’s bulk standing between them, pressing them that much closer, and his chin brushes the top of Stiles’ head a few times in what must be nodding.

“You still angry at me?” Stiles asks into Peter’s chest.

“Oh, absolutely,” Peter says, but the hands stroking up and down Stiles’ spine seem to contradict his words.

Stiles smiles, enjoying the gentle rubbing of Peter’s palms on his backside, the feeling of being held, the reassurance of Peter’s life standing right next to him. Peter isn’t the biggest snuggler in the world—post sex nuzzling and possessive spooning excluded—but near death experiences bring this side of him out sometimes, the protective, shielding side that just seems to want to hold Stiles for hours on end.

“Yeah, well. Same,” Stiles says. “You’re infuriating.”

“It’s a trait we share,” Peter says. 

“Yeah, but. A naked picture of me? In your _wallet_?”

“Do you want to see it?”

“My god, _no._ We should burn it, actually. Just rip it up. That picture almost got me killed.”

“I’d say it was more like my lucky charm,” Peter says, fingers dancing up Stiles’ back, the touch almost playful. He’s grinning, Stiles can just tell.

“You’re the worst,” he says.

“You too,” Peter says, kissing the top of his head. Stiles pushes himself close enough to feel every time Peter’s chest rises and falls with slow, even breathing, the presence of his heartbeat comforting. “Yes, let’s go home.”

\--

“This is unnecessary. I’m already healing.”

“I don’t care. It’ll make me feel better.”

Stiles presses the bag of iced peas to Peter’s temple. Peter’s right—it’s better than it was just a few seconds ago when Stiles went to grab the bag out of the fridge, already less red and angry than before, but the wolfsbane, even cleaned off, still has some lingering effect, slowing down Peter’s healing a bit. Stiles scoots closer to him on the couch, desperate to stay as close as possible just in case keeping a distance will end with Peter slipping out of his grasp again. Getting to touch him, smell him, see him right there in front of him all confirms for Stiles that he’s alive, he’s okay, he’s _here_.

That’s good, that’s all so good, but what kills him now is that this could easily happen again, that someone could burst in here and throw a sack over Peter’s head and take him away, and they might not be as merciful as this situation was. If he’s taking anything away from this, it’s that Stiles is going to cling like a barnacle for the next few weeks.

“It’s awfully clean in here,” Peter points out.

“Oh yeah. I cleaned up. Seeing it all, it—” Stiles swallows. “I kept thinking the worst.”

“The worst?”

He swallows again. His eyes feel awfully moist and he ducks his head to hide them. “You brutally murdered. Someone chopping you up and putting you in a stew. You being electrocuted to death.” He wipes the back of his hand over his left eye. “You scared the hell out of me.”

Peter’s head slides over his knee. He doesn’t seem nearly as shaken as Stiles, which is either ridiculous or sad. Stiles just can’t forget that fear, that anxiety, that gut-wrenching terror of considering Peter wouldn’t— _couldn’t_ come back home. He’d never felt that fear with Peter before. Peter’s invincible, Peter’s a strong werewolf. Peter’s capable of resurrecting himself. Stiles never had to worry like that in the past.

“I’m sorry,” Peter says, squeezing Stiles’ leg.

For once, it’s not Peter’s fault. It would probably feel nice to blame him anyway, tell him he ought to be more careful, start improving his obviously rusty self-defense skills and home security system, but he isn’t to blame here.

He just has so much to say. _Don’t do that to me again. I couldn’t sleep without you. The idea of you being killed honestly killed me too._

Stiles sighs, leaning his head on Peter’s shoulder. The warmth of his body feels amazing, the realness of his skin, and Stiles wants to stay like this for at least ten hours just to soak it all in. The safety.

“I love you,” Stiles exhales on Peter’s shoulder. He feels comfortable and happy and complete, and then he sees— “Hey. Pick those peas back up and put them back on your face.”

“I’m fine,” Peter says petulantly. “I’ve healed.”

“Let me see.”

Stiles lifts his head. Aside from being a little chilled thanks to the peas, Peter’s face seems to have returned to normal, no more marks or scrapes visible. It comforts Stiles, his clear healed skin making it easy for him to pretend that nothing happened to him in the first place.

“Fine,” Stiles says, making to get up. “Let me put those peas back in the freezer.”

“No,” Peter says instantly, tightening his grip on Stiles when he reaches for the bag and tries to stand. “Stay. They can melt. I’ll get new peas.”

Stiles grins, settling himself back against Peter and sliding a hand over Peter’s chest. Touching the hair through his shirt, feeling the warmth of his belly, it reminds him just how long they’ve been apart and how nice it is to reunite after a long time. Stiles has never had I’m-Glad-You’re-Alive-Sex before, but he’s pretty sure he’d like it.

“Hey,” Stiles murmurs. “Are you _all_ the way healed?”

“I would say so,” Peter says. “Why?”

"Maybe we could." Stiles runs a hand down his stomach. "We could take a shower? Clean you up."

He slides his flat palm across Peter's shirt, reaching the hem of it and slipping underneath. A flicker of excitement crosses Peter's eyes.

"I could get behind that." He gets to his feet, extending a hand for Stiles to take. When he does, Peter brushes his thumb over the sore spot on Stiles’ head, still swollen and pink. He frowns. “Maybe you should’ve been the one with the peas.”

“I’m fine,” Stiles says. “It doesn’t even hurt.” He swats Peter’s hand away. “I think all the adrenaline helped.”

“Did it?” Peter murmurs, still running his thumb gingerly over the bump where the butt of a gun knocked him out a few times. “You know, I think that might just be the stupidest thing you’ve ever done.”

“I know,” Stiles agrees. “But I’d do it again. There’s no way you could’ve gotten out of that situation on your own.”

“I had it all under control.”

“Uh, you really didn’t,” Stiles says, remembering all too well how Peter looked strapped to that chair, sprinkled purple, sweat on his neck, blood on his clothes. “I didn’t really have it under control either, but at least I did something.”

“You could’ve died. You probably would’ve died.”

“I didn’t,” Stiles says.

"You're missing the point."

"I get the point, okay?" Stiles slides his hands over the curve of Peter's shoulders. "But I did it, and I would do it again. I care about you, you asshole, and it'll totally get me killed one day, but I'm past the point of being able to do anything about it. Wouldn't you have done something just as stupid for me?"

"No," Peter says, lips a stubborn line. "I would've done something, yes, but I would've done something much smarter."

"You little—" Stiles stops himself, rolling his lips into his mouth to hide his smile, every part of his being just so fucking awash with happiness that Peter's here, alive, making smartass comments that give Stiles a run for his money. "Can you shut your mouth for a little bit and can we please shower together now?"

He doesn’t give Peter the chance to keep throwing wit around, seizing his wrists and tugging him away from the couch and down the hall into the bathroom. Stiles remembers how dark this apartment seemed when Peter was gone, how just yesterday, the hall seemed to press in on him, the walls too small, and now everything is back to normal and _good_ again, Peter’s footsteps sturdy behind him, Peter’s forearm warm in his grip.

“Amazing how much hygiene goes by the wayside when you’re tied to a chair for days,” Peter says when Stiles pulls him into the bathroom. “To think that I’ve been dreaming of showering.”

“No more talking about you being tied to a chair,” Stiles says.

He grabs the back of Peter’s shirt when Peter starts unbuttoning it, swiveling him around and taking over, pushing his hands away.

"I can undress myself, you know," Peter says.

"Just let me," Stiles insists, pulling the shirt off Peter's shoulders and dropping it aside. It feels good to touch his skin, to feel his pulse, his shudders, his breaths under Stiles' touch. He works on his jeans next, unbuttoning and unzipping them before pushing them down Peter’s legs, sliding down to his knees to press a few lingering kisses around Peter’s thigh.

He pulls his boxers down after that, biting into the soft skin of Peter’s inner thigh and stopping only to draw Peter’s cock into his mouth and suck the head.

“We’re not going to shower at this rate,” Peter says, but he twines his hands into Stiles’ hair anyway.

“Just shut up for a second,” Stiles says, licking gently around the sides, dipping his tongue over the slit, taking his time. He can’t shake this need to take care of Peter right now, to treat him tenderly, to drag his tongue slowly, carefully, over every inch of Peter’s skin until he’s pliant and shivering.

He takes his time, alternating between swallowing Peter down and licking carefully over the head, cataloging all of Peter’s responses, from the sharp intakes of breath to the slow exhales to the hand gripping his hair, pulling, squeezing the strands. Stiles has always been good at this, and he knows that Peter’s always loved it, so he does his best to make this the best ever, to make Peter groan and fall apart and forget everything about the past few days.

Peter has other plans, however, because soon his hands are sliding over Stiles’ cheeks, thumbs brushing back and forth to get his attention. “Stiles,” he says, voice quiet, like he’s reining in his restraint. “Stiles, not like this.”

Stiles pulls back and Peter’s thumb slides down to brush over his spit-slick lips, eyes reverent. Stiles thinks about refusing, drawing Peter back into his mouth and making him come at least once like this, just to feel him spill down his throat, but then Peter’s pulling him to his feet and into the shower.

“I wanted to blow you,” Stiles says.

“Yes, I know,” Peter says. He shakes his head, seemingly caught between exasperation and overwhelming fondness. “You’re insatiable.”

He turns around to get the spray started, the first touch of water on Stiles’ skin unbelievably cold. He scoots closer and wraps his arms around Peter's middle, pillowing his cheek against Peter's back and just feeling the heartbeat pulsing through his skin, reminding him that he's all right, everything's all right. Peter twists around until they're facing each other, the water slowly warming up.

"You're really not going to leave my side, are you?" Peter asks, but he doesn't sound all too annoyed. His hands find Stiles' waist. 

“Hey, I’ve been through an ordeal. Expect some traumatic clinginess, all right?” Stiles says.

"For how long can I expect this barnacle treatment?"

Stiles pinches him in the side. "I'm no barnacle. I'm the best thing that's ever happened to you." He leans forward, catching the warm rivulets of water running down Peter's chest with his lips. "A while. Until I'm sure you won't run off like that again."

"I didn't exactly run off," Peter tells him. "But if you want to play guard dog, I won't stand in your way." His hands rub at Stiles' hips. "I wasn't the only one in danger today, you know."

"I know," Stiles says, breathing out slowly. Today was just full of too many close calls. Hell, this whole week was full of close calls, and the stress of it all is finally leaving his body now that he's under a hot spray and in Peter's arms. "Which is why I told Lydia and had a safety net at the ready."

"The timing just happened to be right," Peter says. He pushes at Stiles' shoulders until he pulls back from his chest, meeting Peter's gaze. "It could've gone wrong. You basically left it up to chance."

"And even though luck was on our side, it might not always be, yada yada yada. I get it, okay?"

Peter's grip on Stiles' shoulders tightens. "You don't." He looks at Stiles like he's trying to find words to say, like he's trying to commit every nuance of Stiles' face to memory. "If something happened to you, I'd." He trails off.

"Revenge spree number two, right?" Stiles volunteers. When Peter's intense expression doesn't change, Stiles wonders if he's accidentally hit the nail on the head. "Come on, don't say stuff like that." He shouldn’t be that surprised; he was there when Peter threatened all the hunters with their lives if they so much as laid a hand on Stiles. He touches Peter's cheek. "Everybody will hate you again and my dad will probably arrest you. And I might be required to haunt you from the grave until you straighten up."

"You can't go after me like that again," Peter says, voice firm.

"Come on, I would've thought that you'd love someone coming to your rescue, saving your hide." He thinks back to a cold night where Peter leapt in front of him and took a clawed hand to the gut for him. "And maybe you can consider it me paying you back."

Maybe it'll also help it all make sense for Peter. For weeks after they had started sleeping together, he mentioned that saving Stiles that night, taking that harsh blow for him, it hadn't been logical. It had been a reflex, a split-second gut reaction. A need to protect. Stiles feels the same way, _felt_ the same way when Peter was kidnapped, and whatever he did to get him back, it wasn't born out of sense or reason or even clear-headed decision-making. It had all just felt _necessary_.

Peter's hands travel up Stiles' shoulders to the sides of his neck and his jaw and his cheeks, cradling his head with a determined possessiveness that feels nice, feels _familiar_. "I keep trying to figure out—" He stops himself, shaking his head.

"What?" Stiles asks.

Peter keeps shaking his head. "—what I did to deserve you," he admits. The way he's looking at Stiles, baffled and awed and worshipful and perhaps even frustrated that Stiles is just as willing to put himself on the line as Peter is for him, it feels even better than the warm water running over his tense muscles.

"Maybe you were really good in a past life," Stiles offers, but his words get swept up as Peter leans in, a soft hungry sound escaping his lips, and kisses Stiles with fierce intent. Stiles clutches at Peter's shoulders and returns the kiss with just as much vigor, every ounce of relief that Peter's okay and healed and _alive_ pouring out of him.

Peter kisses him until he's breathless, drawing Stiles' lower lip into his mouth and running his tongue against Stiles', using all the tricks that he knows Stiles loves to make him come apart. Stiles whimpers, already hardening, and Peter seems to notice instantly, his hand snaking between their bodies to slide over Stiles' cock. He’s not tired anymore like he was when they were curled up on the couch, just happy to be done with the drama and the danger, and now every emotion feels like it’s rising up and erupting out of his body, demanding attention.

"There are times," Peter says, breaking away from Stiles' mouth to run his thumb over Stiles' freshly reddened lower lip, "when I can hardly believe that I get to do this with you."

"Fuck, _same_ ," Stiles moans, throwing himself back against Peter and kissing him again.

His legs quake with every stroke Peter's squeezing onto his cock, already feeling embarrassingly close to climax after being so on edge all day. He wants to reciprocate but hardly feels like he's in the state of mind to do so well; his entire being feels like it's on fire and getting stoked more and more every time Peter touches him. He wants to say what he's thinking, things like _I missed you so much_ and _I'm so glad we're okay_ and _I thought I'd lose you_ , but can't focus long enough to do so, trusting that hopefully, Peter already knows anyway.

Standing there in that shower under the hot spray, his arms wrapped around Peter's shoulders, his cheek pressed against Peter's jaw, he just feels unbelievably _relieved_ , thankful. It's like all the tension is slipping away from his body and washing itself down the drain, the stress unknotting itself from his muscles, a feeling punctuated with every pump to his length and every word murmured into his hair. No matter what his father told him to do to take care of himself and stay rested, none of those slow breathing sessions or fitful naps compare to this, here and now, holding Peter and knowing he's safe. He has no clue how they got here, no idea how Peter went from some psycho Stiles wanted out of his life to someone so important, so _entrenched_ in his thoughts and worries and care. All he knows is that he's here now, somewhere where he cares about Peter so damn much it hurts to think about him being taken away. He takes in a deep inhale, the feel of it rattling his chest, and he cants his hips into Peter's touch.

"That's good," he whispers, hardly audible over the spray. "God, Peter, I'm so glad—"

Peter’s free hand finds Stiles' lower back, pressing in at the sensitive dip of the skin. He bites down, harder than usual, on the curve of Stiles’ neck, and it feels oddly reassuring, definitely arousing, Stiles shivering under the scrape of his teeth. "Shh," he says. "I know."

He keeps stroking Stiles until he comes, the evidence washed away and down the drain soon after. It takes an embarrassingly short amount of time to bring him to orgasm, his overload of emotion and gratitude and remnants of complete fear eager to come rushing out and consequently speeding the process along, leaving Stiles shaking and feeling infinitely better than he was a few hours ago. Peter takes care of him until he's no longer in danger of slipping to his knees in the shower anymore and his legs find their sturdiness, arms tight around him.

He looks up at Peter when his mind clears, at the wet hair smoothed away from his face, at the water running down his cheeks and clinging to his chin. His hard-on presses into Stiles' thigh, the unspoken request not flying past him, and he takes Peter into his hand.

"What do you want me to do?”

“How about you continue,” he suggests, “what you started earlier?”

Stiles is on board, and doesn’t need to be asked twice. He kisses Peter first, quick and filthy, and then descends down to his knees, the showerhead raining on his back and shoulders and soaking his hair while he slides his hands up and down Peter’s thighs and takes a moment to admire his hardness, curving upwards and practically begging Stiles to take it all the way into the back of his mouth.

He licks Peter back into his mouth without any hesitation. He doesn’t taste like he did earlier, the water washing away anything but freshness, but Stiles sucks and swirls his tongue until precome slips onto his tongue. He likes the taste, always has ever since that first time he decided, full of nerves and uncertainty and _want_ , to suck Peter off, and it hasn’t changed. Stiles sucks him in further, hands roaming around Peter’s thighs until he’s kneading his behind, slipping his hands up to the curve in his back, pulling him closer and closer and closer until Stiles can feel the heat of his skin.

“Perfect, Stiles,” Peter’s moaning above him, hands back in Stiles’ hair, petting, pulling. “You love this, don’t you?”

He does, that much is always obvious, but there’s definitely an edge of desperation to his ministrations this time around. He lets Peter’s cock nudge the back of his throat, ignoring the ache in his jaw in favor of keeping Peter in his mouth, hands flexing over his wet hips. Peter’s grip on his hair is just on the right side of rough, the soft trembles in his legs hypnotic for Stiles to feel under his touches.

He pulls back, just for a second, to sink his teeth into Peter’s thigh, brushing his thumb over the red spot that quickly fades. It usually bothers him, how quickly Peter heals no matter how hard Stiles sucks and bites marks into his skin, but today, it’s almost soothing to see all the redness of his teeth smooth away under the fall of the water, leaving him unmarred and clean. He goes back to the head of Peter’s dick after a few more soft bites to the inside of his leg, suckling just the tip of it past his lips.

“Made for this,” Peter says, his voice almost lost in the water’s noise. “I swear, you were made for me to touch you like this.”

He keeps talking, Stiles only catching pieces of the words. Some of it sounds like _yes, keep going_ and _missed you_ , and Stiles lets Peter’s words guide him into doing exactly what he likes. He wants to feel him lose control, to have him spill over in his mouth, to lick up everything he can and leave Peter shaking, and from the way Peter’s moans are losing rhythm, he’s pretty sure he’s close to his goal. 

“Stiles—Stiles, come here.” His hands are tugging on Stiles’ hair, pulling on his scalp until Stiles regretfully lets his cock slip out of his mouth and gets back on his feet, knees sore from the hard shower floor, and instantly Peter is jerking him closer and kissing him, mouth fierce and unyielding against his. Stiles groans and arches into the kiss, curling into the demanding force of it as much as Peter while Peter comes between them, hands tight on Stiles’ arms. His blunt nails dig into Stiles’ skin, leaving crescent marks that Stiles is weirdly thrilled by, and they keep kissing until the breath in his lungs is lost.

“Wow,” Stiles breathes, tipping his cheek against Peter’s.

“What do you say,” Peter murmurs, hand tracing the back of Stiles’ neck, down to his spine, down to the small of his back, “to us adjourning to the bed, and me fucking you for the next three hours?” He presses an open-mouthed kiss against Stiles’ jaw. “Give or take.”

“A—a welcome home gift?”

“For you or me?”

“Ideally, both of us,” Stiles says, tilting his head to accommodate the trajectory of Peter’s kisses down his neck. He can’t help but laugh, feeling so grateful and comfortable and lax that everything just feels _good_. “I’m up for it.”

\--

Their shower is pretty fast after that. Peter scrubs the rest of the memories of sitting in a grimy motel room off while Stiles washes away the dry blood by his temple, leaving behind a mark that looks substantially smaller without all the crusted red surrounding it. It feels good to get clean, to see all the remnants of the day wash down the drain, to stand under the spray until it turns cold.

When he's done drying off his hair and dropping the towel on the bathroom floor for Peter to clean up—and complain about—later, he finds Peter already settled on his side of the bed. Something about seeing him there hits Stiles, unexpectedly, like a strike to the stomach. It looks so familiar and lovely and like _everything Stiles wants_ , forever, and he doesn't ever want to take it for granted again. He knows he will—there will be days in the future when he yells at Peter and hates Peter and wishes Peter listened more—but beneath all that, there's a certainty that Stiles has never felt so poignantly before that he shouldn't let go.

“Is that my robe?” Peter asks when he sees Stiles in the doorway.

It is, but Stiles doesn’t want to talk about that. “Listen,” he says, climbing onto the bed. “I was so sure I could’ve prevented all this if I had been here.”

Peter snorts, the sound really stepping on Stiles’ incoming sentimental speech. “And what exactly made you think that?”

“Hey, I’m good at coming from behind with a baseball bat. Nobody expects some guy with a bat crouching behind a door.”

“They were fully equipped hunters with military-grade armor.”

“Anyway,” Stiles says loudly, steamrolling over Peter’s negativity. “I kept thinking about it. A lot. So I decided I really want to be around for any future kidnappings.”

“So we can be kidnapped together?”

“Just listen. I want to move in,” Stiles blurts out, deciding to get straight to what matters. He shifts on the bed. “I want to be here all the time.”

Peter blinks at him. “You want to move in?”

“You gave me a key,” Stiles says defensively. “You can’t be that against the idea. And I spend a lot of time here anyway. I sleep over constantly.”

“I’m _not_ against the idea,” Peter says, and even though Stiles knew he wouldn't be, hearing him say it so surely feels like a massive squeeze to his heart. His hand touches Stiles’ lower back. “You sure?”

“Who else will protect you from uprisings? Revenge sprees? The hunters who have your photograph on the center of their dartboards?”

“I highly doubt it will be you,” Peter says, soothing the sting of his words with a soft stroke up Stiles’ spine. “But I’m still on board.” He narrows his eyes a sliver. “How much stuff do you have?”

“Tons. Truckloads. I’ll need my own floor. A walk-in closet.” 

“Anything else?”

“I’d appreciate you building me my own bathroom. Oh, and a hot tub would be nice. Maybe an intercom system too.” He grins. “Are you changing your mind?”

“Hmm. No.” He draws Stiles closer. “What other horrible habits do you have that I should expect as your roommate?”

“None. I’m an angel.”

"Hmm," Peter says again. His thumb touches Stiles' chin, tilting it up. When Stiles looks up at him, he looks fond, thankful, relaxed. Happy. "You know that I'm not going anywhere, yes?"

"Unless you're being forcibly taken?"

Peter rolls his eyes. He tightens his grip on Stiles' chin to give his jaw a squeeze. "You know that I won't be _forcibly taken_ again anytime soon, yes?"

"Do I?"

"Well, you’ve just self-appointed yourself as my bodyguard, so I expect results.”

Stiles laughs. He can’t be sure that something like this won’t happen again in the future, the same way he can’t be sure if he and his baseball bat will actually be equipped to handle whatever might be coming, but right now, Peter’s here, and they’re both okay, and that’s good enough for now.

He leans in to kiss Peter, and Peter meets him halfway.

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from The Score's song Where Do You Run.


End file.
